Responses to the Self-Review Questionnaire: Security and Privacy for the Direct Sockets API
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What information might this feature expose to Web sites or other parties, and for what purposes is that exposure necessary?
This API exposes the information about printers connected to the host and their capabilities. While this information provides an active fingerprinting surface, it can be mitigated by only exposing a printers to the script once the user has explicitly granted access for that printer (for instance, by selecting it from a chooser).
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Do features in your specification expose the minimum amount of information necessary to enable their intended uses?
Yes.
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How do the features in your specification deal with personal information, personally-identifiable information (PII), or information derived from them?
There is no information of this type being handled by the feature.
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How do the features in your specification deal with sensitive information?
There is no sensitive information handled by the feature.
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Do the features in your specification introduce new state for an origin that persists across browsing sessions?
No. However, a user agent may choose to persist printing permissions across browsing sessions.
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Do the features in your specification expose information about the underlying platform to origins?
Yes, it exposes a list of printers which a user has granted an origin access to. If no access was granted for the origin, then no additional data is exposed.
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Does this specification allow an origin to send data to the underlying platform?
Yes -- it allows print jobs with documents to be sent to printers.
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Do features in this specification enable access to device sensors?
No.
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Do features in this specification enable new script execution/loading mechanisms?
No.
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Do features in this specification allow an origin to access other devices?
Yes -- Web Printing API allows an origin to access local printers.
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Do features in this specification allow an origin some measure of control over a user agent’s native UI?
No.
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What temporary identifiers do the features in this specification create or expose to the web?
None.
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How does this specification distinguish between behavior in first-party and third-party contexts?
There's no distinction.
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How do the features in this specification work in the context of a browser’s Private Browsing or Incognito mode?
Not applicable -- this API is intended to be used in Isolated Web Apps (which do not support either mode).
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Does this specification have both "Security Considerations" and "Privacy Considerations" sections?
The specification has a single Privacy & Security Considerations section that consists of potential issues and various mitigations.
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Do features in your specification enable origins to downgrade default security protections?
No.
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How does your feature handle non-"fully active" documents?
The existing objects provided by the API will be invalidated; the origin will have to query the list of printers again and replace the old entries.
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What should this questionnaire have asked?
N/A.