Hey everyone, thank you for your patience, and thank you to everyone who engaged constructively. It is clear based on the feedback we’ve received that a bigger discussion needs to take place, and I’m not sure my personal repository is the best place to do that - we are looking for a better forum and will update when we have found one. We want to continue the discussion and collaborate to address your core concerns in an improved explainer.
I want to be transparent about the perceived silence from my end. In the W3C process it is common for individuals to put forth early proposals for new web standards, and host them in a team member’s personal repository while pursuing adoption within a standards body. My first impulse was to jump in with more information as soon as possible - but our team wanted to take in all the feedback, and be thorough in our response.
That being said, I did want to take a moment to clarify the problems our team is trying to solve that exist on the web today and point out key details of this early stage proposal that may have been missed.
WEI’s goal is to make the web more private and safe The WEI experiment is part of a larger goal to keep the web safe and open while discouraging cross-site tracking and lessening the reliance on fingerprinting for combating fraud and abuse. Fraud detection and mitigation techniques often rely heavily on analyzing unique client behavior over time for anomalies, which involves large collection of client data from both human users and suspected automated clients.
Privacy features like user-agent reduction, IP reduction, preventing cross-site storage, and fingerprint randomization make it more difficult to distinguish or reidentify individual clients, which is great for privacy, but makes fighting fraud more difficult. This matters to users because making the web more private without providing new APIs to developers could lead to websites adding more:
sign-in gates to access basic content invasive user fingerprinting, which is less transparent to users and more difficult to control excessive challenges (SMS verification, captchas) All of these options are detrimental to a user’s web browsing experience, either by increasing browsing friction or significantly reducing privacy.
We believe this is a tough problem to solve, but a very important one that we will continue to work on. We will continue to design, discuss, and debate in public.
WEI is not designed to single out browsers or extensions Our intention for web environment integrity is to provide browsers with an alternative to the above checks and make it easier for users to block invasive fingerprinting without breaking safety mechanisms. The objective of WEI is to provide a signal that a device can be trusted, not to share data or signals about the browser on the device.
Maintaining users’ access to an open web on all platforms is a critical aspect of the proposal. It is an explicit goal that user agents can browse the web without this proposal, which means we want the user to remain free to modify their browser, install extensions, use Dev tools, and importantly, continue to use accessibility features.
WEI prevents ecosystem lock-in through hold-backs We had proposed a hold-back to prevent lock-in at the platform level. Essentially, some percentage of the time, say 5% or 10%, the WEI attestation would intentionally be omitted, and would look the same as if the user opted-out of WEI or the device is not supported.
This is designed to prevent WEI from becoming “DRM for the web”. Any sites that attempted to restrict browser access based on WEI signals alone would have also restricted access to a significant enough proportion of attestable devices to disincentivize this behavior.
Additionally, and this could be clarified in the explainer more, WEI is an opportunity for developers to use hardware-backed attestation as alternatives to captchas and other privacy-invasive integrity checks.
WEI does not disadvantage browsers that spoof their identity The hold-back and the lack of browser identification in the response provides cover to browsers that spoof their user agents that might otherwise be treated differently by sites. This also includes custom forks of Chromium that web developers create.
Let’s work together on finding the right path We acknowledge facilitating an ecosystem that is open, private, and safe at the same time is a difficult problem, especially when working on the scale and complexity of the web. We welcome collaboration on a solution for scaled anti-abuse that respects user privacy, while maintaining the open nature of the web.
Hardware backed attestation isn’t about security or privacy, if you can’t pass SafetyNet on your Android device you can’t install certain apps, but even with stock software and passing SafetyNet you can still install malware direct from the App Store, it’s about vendor lock in, always has been.
Edit: Clarified my point.
You are absolutely right
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This is the part that caught my attention:
Privacy features like user-agent reduction, IP reduction, preventing cross-site storage, and fingerprint randomization make it more difficult to distinguish or reidentify individual clients, which is great for privacy, but makes fighting fraud more difficult.
And we do those things, not because we’re fraudsters, but because we’re trying to protect ourselves from the likez of YOU!
YOU did this, change your model and maybe it’ll be better? Oh! But! Mooooooooney! I forgot. Stupid me.
This is the fucking bully telling the nerd that if he doesn’t just HAND OVER his lunch money, that he’ll get beat. It’s YOUR fault! Not OURS!
Edit: Formatting and added about bully
Edit 2: fixing the formatting of the formatting edit. :-D lol
Look at the steps we have to go through? Firefox container tabs just for google products, have to switch to DDG as default after every update, have to keep the browser extensions updated, have to use vpn, tried to not use google open auth when register on 3rd party sites, have to clean the cookies regularly, have to click through those cookie settings visiting a site. Oh, and have to go around the amp link when trying to share a searched image/page result.
lol are you on my machine? :-D
Just wait until tomorrow, next week, next year…
WEI’s goal is to make the web more private and safe The WEI experiment is part of a larger goal to keep the web safe and open
(Emphasis mine)
They contradict themselves in the span of 2 sentences. Great look, folks.
How is that a contradiction?
The Open Internet (OI) is a fundamental network (net) neutrality concept in which information across the World Wide Web (WWW) is equally free and available without variables that depend on the financial motives of Internet Service Providers (ISP).
Open is not the opposite of private. You can have an open internet where your information is not shared with third parties, i.e. private.
The web is currently a communal well. We all drink from it because people before us paid the foundations.
Google aims to be the owner of that well. Like the land and oil barons before them, they wish to monetize every last second of web access.
That same corporation, to spew such vile, ignorant nonsense is…well, I guess it shouldn’t be much of a surprise, should it?
WEI’s goal is to make the web more private and safe
Bull. Fucking. Shit. You do not get to pick and choose who you treat differently based on software level indications. You absolutely cannot justify this technology with fraud-prevention; as your fraud prevention should be baked in elsewhere in your logic chain and service delivery anyways. Developers do not need yet another magic number. Your typical fraudster is going to be an Authenticated Human anyways; and will easily bypass this attestation if this is actually implemented as intended. Because of that fact; this will drive desperate developers to implement this in consumer-hostile and privacy-hostile manners. You cannot simply say “That’s not how it’s intended to be used” and expect those devs to play along with it!
TL;DR: We must not give developers tools that can be abused in ways that run counter to the open internet
WEI is not designed to single out browsers or extensions
Wrong!
You absolutely ARE singling out browsers; particularly ones that may be older or “Un-attestable” for other arbitrary reasons. This will impact a large number of people in the disabled community who may use specific, webpage modifying extensions in order to make the web more usable for themselves.
WEI prevents ecosystem lock-in through hold-backs
This won’t work; your devs will just write other server backend code that is forked off of yours that won’t “hold back”. This is a ridiculously tiny band-aid for a gaping wound that needs stitches;
WEI does not disadvantage browsers that spoof their identity
Wrong again! You cannot trust developers and companies with financial motivations and interests to not mark spoofed browsers as fraudulent; nor can you obligate them to treat them exactly the same as a properly attested browser agent.
Let’s work together on finding the right path
This proposal is not working together! This is a blatant attempt by Google and Alphabet to further bully it’s dominance over standards for the financial gain of itself and it’s partners. Please don’t pretend otherwise.
your devs will just write other server backend code that is forked off of yours that won’t “hold back”.
Isn’t it the client (i.e. the browser) that holds back randomly? The server for any service can’t force clients to send an attestation.
Right.
Instead, the worry is that devs will write other server backend code that won’t respect browser back-holds, that will demand compliance.
making the web more private without providing new APIs to developers could lead to… significantly reducing privacy.
Lol
Maintaining users’ access to an open web on all platforms is a critical aspect of the proposal.
But with this the web wouldn’t be open. 😒
It’s a bullshit answer to placate people. “We don’t want this to turn into DRM for the web” when it’s literally doing exactly that, regardless of what they claim they’re doing
There’s a massive difference between one’s intentions and the consequences of one’s actions. They are only talking about their intentions, while the rest of the community is bringing up the inevitable consequences.
And I honestly doubt their intentions are as good as this person makes them sound. They may actually believe what they’re saying, too, but anyone with two brain cells to rub together should be able to see that this isn’t quite as harmless of a proposal as they try to say
Google employees are not fools. Google does not hire fools. They know exactly what they’re doing.
The objective of WEI is to provide a signal that a device can be trusted
This is exactly the opposite of everything anyone would learn in CompSci 101.
NEVER TRUST THE CLIENT. CLIENTS CANNOT BE TRUSTED. CLIENTS ARE NOT SANE. THAR BE DRAGONS THERE. (Maybe that last one is pirate treasure maps, but I think it holds.)
Anyone who is buying this guy’s argument that they’re trying to make it so you can trust clients, should immediately be removed from any computers they are in possession of and be “invited” by men in black suits to go live on a nice agrarian farm where the only computer available is an air-gapped Tandy TRS-80 MC-10. They can rejoin humanity when they’ve relearned the lessons of the last 40 years and understand why this is just patently insane.
I think your and their definition of “trusted” is a bit different. They mean trusted as in “very likely a real human”. That’s not enough to allow any privileged access, but it should help when trying to block bots heuristically while preserving a good experience for real users. “Trusted” devices could skip capture checks for example.
Of course this doesn’t make this proposal any better, it’s still extremely dangerous and misguided imo!
In this case, I believe that the clients will be signed by the big companies (Apple, Google Microsoft, etc) and these signatures are what will be trusted.
For instance, if you download Chrome, it will be signed by Google. But if you try to alter it in anyway, the signature will not be valid and the website won’t trust you anymore.
Anyone who’s played an online game in the past 30+ years knows that nothing is secure on a client machine. You have to rotate offsets and encryption keys constantly, and even then you buy yourself a few days at the most. You’d think google would have actual good engineers, what are they paying all that money for?
“You’re blowing this out of proportion… circular speech… platitudes… and this will make everything better!”
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True
WEI prevents ecosystem lock-in through hold-backs
We had proposed a hold-back to prevent lock-in at the platform level. Essentially, some percentage of the time, say 5% or 10%, the WEI attestation would intentionally be omitted, and would look the same as if the user opted-out of WEI or the device is not supported.This is designed to prevent WEI from becoming “DRM for the web”.
At least this acknowledges that this proposal would in fact be “DRM for the web” if the only thing from preventing it from being that is an additional measure unrelated to the core implementation.
Not to mention, what prevents a future release of the feature either turning the percentage to 0% or removing the hold-back entirely?
Yes or a “retry until attestation received” strategy by websites.
And if attestations are rate limited then a grace period until they can get enough attempts in to be confident.
If sites are expected to accept opted-out clients because they might just be randomly non-attested, why wouldn’t the hackers and fraudsters just opt out of attestation?
I guess the idea is that the “fraudsters” would have to opt out of every attestation, so after many requests, the client can be identified as likely refusing every attestation. I agree with your first point: many sites will do everything they can to get an attestation from the client.
The idea might be websites using traditional methods such as captchas or heutistics if attestation is denied.
Not to mention, what prevents a future release of the feature either turning the percentage to 0% or removing the hold-back entirely?
Imo thats like the main issue here. Google tweaks chromium changing a single number and everything goes to shit. This proposal is a trojan horse!
“Privacy features like user-agent reduction, IP reduction, preventing cross-site storage, and fingerprint randomization make it more difficult to distinguish or reidentify individual clients, which is great for privacy, but makes fighting fraud more difficult. This matters to users because making the web more private without providing new APIs to developers could lead to websites adding more:”
Ohhh it’s fighting fraud that they want to do! And here I thought it was entirely for the much more profitable goal of maintaining advertising revenue. Well, I’m SO GLAD to be wrong on that one. Slash S.
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When we all started using Chrome to get away from Microsoft’s web stewardship that arose from everyone using IE.
we just need another large corporation to save us again
Comment of the year.
Probably when “I use ie to download chrome” became a mainstream meme.
Unfortunately this is a money-ocracy (data-exploitation-ocracy), not a democracy.
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Chrome was way faster than anything else out there. Back when Chrome was new, Firefox would regularly freeze the whole browser when one Tab got a little busy. Chrome fixed that by using multi processes for the Tabs and Firefox took years to catch up. Only recently everybody is more or less on the same level again, but that’s largely because everybody outside of Firefox is just a repackaged Chrome.
I do web dev and I can say I was super guilty of this back in the 2010s. I bit the hype hard, and now we’re getting right back to the circumstances that made ie such a POS to work with. (In my defense, I got my dev job in 2013 and had to develop for ie6. It’s not a good defense, but I think that really lead to my overhype for google. I had no knowledge of chrome’s bloated whale carcass days, so it always felt like the browser that “just worked ™”)
Market monopoly inspires evil in the good intentioned. Market monopoly also inspires nefariousness in the evil.
I’d say this is the sort of thing that inspired Google to remove the “don’t be evil” from their guidelines.
You must mean ie7, surely?
I was developing for ie6 back in 2010 and I considered those to be dark, dark times. I can’t believe it hung on for another 3 years?
We had some demanding clients lol
I remember having to use pie.htc to hack rounded corners for buttons into ie6. I remember liking ie7 a little bit better, but ie8 felt like a god send compared to 6 lmao
I recall having to support multiple versions of ie as well at the same time as well. I can’t remember what year we dropped support for ie6 but it wasn’t too long after I started.
I danced every time we got to drop another ie support version all the way up to 11
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Maybe when we allowed money (here represented by the size of the browser market share) to translate directly into political power (here represented by the ability to enforce arbitrary standards).
lol
Nice internet you have there. It would be a shame if something “happened” to it.
“We’re the good guys, trust me!”
All roads with Google lead to tracking and advertising
Hey, thank you so much for the feedback on having the wolf guard the sheep. It’s clear from the discussion that there some concern around using ravenous carnivores to guard prey-animals and we want to continue this important discussion in a meaningless way so it looks like we give a shit before we make the wolf guard the sheep after “a significant time to discuss and address concerns”. We will obviously listen to take onboard feedback such as “what colour fur should the wolf have” and “should it be a male wolf or a female wolf?”. Don’t worry you’ll be able to significantly change this proposal as long as the net result is that a wolf ends up guarding the sheep. Thank you so much for all the involvement from all you sheep. Kind regards, The Wolf.
we are looking for a better forum and will update when we have found one.
The only acceptable forum for this garbage is the deepest pits of hell. Fuck off forever.
How does this person sleep at night?
On a pile of advertising money
Their response sounds genuine, I think it’s more a matter of myopic optimism taken advantage of by the broader company. They don’t have to be explicitly evil if their otherwise moral employees trust the corporate apparatus to not abuse powers granted to them in the name of security.
People like this don’t feel remorse, they aren’t capable of it. Lying to placate the dumb masses is natural to them, because they assume that all other human beings can only feel either rage or greed like they do.
They probably don’t, but they have families to feed, so it’s better to follow the guidelines and lie to a bunch of anonymous people on the internet rather than have your wife and kids beating you up after losing your job due to “not being evil enough”
These are Google employees. A dozen would-be employers would send them lucrative job offers as soon as they so much as contemplated the idea of resigning. They and their families are in no danger of going hungry. Everything they do, they do by choice.
