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Ask HN: Why do many sites ask for recording permissions on Android?

18 points by greggyb ↗ HN
I was reading a story on CNN earlier today (from an HN) link. While reading, after scrolling through part of the story, I was prompted with an Android permissions dialogue asking for access to the device's microphone. This has become a common experience for me when browsing on mobile, but not on desktop browsers. What is going on on these pages such that they are asking for permission to record audio?

Here is the story I mentioned, though it is not unique in any way I can discern. https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/10/business/costco-kirkland-signature-brand/index.html

10 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 32.6 ms ] thread
pkilgore
Doesn't happen for me when I just tested (and I cannot recall it ever happening).

Android 9, Security Patch Feb 19

Chrome 72

smt88
I've never experienced this on any phone with any version of Android. You may want to post in an Android forum and/or get a new phone. You may have some malware on there.
snrji
Happened to me with another application that shouldn't use the microphone.
l24ztj
Maybe your ad blocker is misconfigured, an ad was loaded and requested that permission?
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greggyb
Based on comments below I realize I did not give much other useful information.

I run uBlock on Firefox on latest Android. This has happened occasionally in my memory for quite a while. It seems to only be on news sites, though memory may be unreliable there.

Interestingly, I do not encounter the same when I go back to that article now. I did notice another user post a comment asking about the same: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19475435

Pixel2. Android 9. February Security patch. Firefox 66.0.1. My personal policy for security settings for things is to set everything to "ask me every time" or similar.

londons_explore
Can you screenshot?

Was it Firefox asking for the permission, or android asking for the permission?

codemusings
You have to consider that this might very well be an advertiser or some sort of tracking technology embedded in CNN that's requesting this via WEB API. CNN is not controlling what gets executed via 3rd party scripts.

The abuse of the Notifications WEB API for instance is also very common.

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