The issue only surfaced after a developer had trouble using multipoint Bluetooth headphones while an AliExpress tab was open: the headphones wouldn't switch properly from the computer...
I did some js reverse engineering work on chinese websites few years ago and it’s legit industry leading tracking tech. Very few websites in the west are even remotely as sophisticated in that regard.
Unsurprisingly China has the best tracking ecosystem but it’s not for the reasons you might think. It’s just so competitive in China that tracking and automation blocking is super important for chinese businesses.
Have you noticed that there’s no such thing like internet archive in China? It’s because nobody wants it. It’s too dangerous to have recorded history of any sort.
I don’t think we’ve discovered anything particularly niche that isn’t public knowledge today. Since Fable-line of LLMs dropped deobfuscating and reverse engineering web and phone apps is very approachable. Github is full of resources and you can start with something like cloakbrowser
None of fingerprint tech is illegal in any way so it’s a free for all and every browser except Brave (which yeah I know sucks) does basically nothing to fix this.
Business dangers from scraping / automation are basically of two types:
archival record for proof mostly for legal prosecution and contract negotiation. There’s a lot of really bad shit going on on Chinese web despite the great firewall of China and you can hide it in plain sight if it’s ephemeral. So if I sell illegal goods but it’s not archived ever no one can really prosecute me. Gray/black markets players in China just rebrand every month and get away with everything.
real time data for price/trend competition. Prices and trends move incredibly fast in China, people in the west don’t even understand how far ahead chinese e-commerce is, Amazon is like 10 years behind. So all that scraped info is incredibly valuable for chasing capitalism.
I did some js reverse engineering work on chinese websites few years ago and it’s legit industry leading tracking tech. Very few websites in the west are even remotely as sophisticated in that regard.
Unsurprisingly China has the best tracking ecosystem but it’s not for the reasons you might think. It’s just so competitive in China that tracking and automation blocking is super important for chinese businesses.
Have you noticed that there’s no such thing like internet archive in China? It’s because nobody wants it. It’s too dangerous to have recorded history of any sort.
Will it be possible for you to share your findings?
I don’t think we’ve discovered anything particularly niche that isn’t public knowledge today. Since Fable-line of LLMs dropped deobfuscating and reverse engineering web and phone apps is very approachable. Github is full of resources and you can start with something like cloakbrowser
None of fingerprint tech is illegal in any way so it’s a free for all and every browser except Brave (which yeah I know sucks) does basically nothing to fix this.
nobody? you mean, not even the common people? what are the dangers they see?
Business dangers from scraping / automation are basically of two types:
The CCP disagreeing with your version of recorded history, probably.