Usenix Enigma HTML5 is a boon for unscrupulous web advertising networks, which can use the markup language’s features to build up detailed fingerprints of individual netizens without their knowledge or consent.

In a presentation at Usenix’s Enigma 2018 conference in California this week, Arvind Narayanan, an assistant professor of computer science at Princeton, showed how some of the advanced features of HTML5 – such as audio playback – can be used to identify individual browser types and follow them around online to get an idea of what they’re into.

For example, different browsers process sound files in slightly different ways, and allowing an ad network – or any website – to potentially work out which version of a browser is being used on which operating system. Couple this with other details – such as the battery level and WebRTC – and you can start to form a fingerprint for an individual user.

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