I was concerned that Push Notifications may have a privacy impact, and a user 
might want to make a choice not to enable them. Apart from anything, Push 
notifications disclose to the carrier that the user has installed a specific 
app. Implicit permissions & a setting to enable/disable push notifications 
might suffice though to begin with, especially if this UI showed you which 
applications were registered to send & receive push APIs. 

On Sep 4, 2012, at 1:25 PM, Lucas Adamski wrote:

> 
> On 9/4/2012 9:40 AM, ptheriault wrote:
>> Now that we have more details of this API, I think we need to revisit the 
>> permission model. I think the user should be asked before an app is allowed 
>> to receive push notifications (inline with the transparency/no surpises 
>> privacy principle). The user should also be able to see what push channels 
>> are registered and turn them off. This could be achieved by requiring an 
>> explicit permission installed, privileged and certified web apps.
>> The only issue I see with this is that a user might not understand what  
>> "Push Notification" actually is. 
> 
> I don't think they will understand.  How is this worse than using alarm API 
> to poll a server?  We don't provide UX
> anywhere to manage per-channel network access.  For consumption purposes we 
> might want to have the ability to turn off
> push on a per-device or per-app basis, but that's not a permission IMHO.
>  Lucas.
> 
>> On Aug 8, 2012, at 5:45 PM, Lucas Adamski wrote:
>> 
>>> Initial draft.  One of the trickier APIs to reason through as it really 
>>> depends on the intended use cases.  Thoughts?
>>> 
>>> ==Push Notifications API==
>>> 
>>> References:
>>> *https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI/PushAPI
>>> *https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=747907
>>> *https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/mozilla.dev.webapi/doBebGwUTNE
>>> 
>>> Brief purpose of API: Asynchronous notification mechanism for apps with 
>>> store and forward capabilities.
>>> 
>>> General Use Cases: Provide an mechanism for websites to push small 
>>> notifications to subscribed applications on the client, even when they 
>>> aren't currently running.  
>>> *IM messaging apps.  
>>> *Website activity notifications (auctions, online price alerts, travel 
>>> advisories and flight status, banking activity, etc).
>>> 
>>> Inherent threats:
>>> *Spoofing notifications could lead user to disclosing sensitive information
>>> *Spoofing messages could trick an app into disclosing sensitive information 
>>> (i.e. submit info to URL..) or otherwise take action on behalf of the 
>>> attacker.
>>> *Spoofing of notifications to system-critical applications could result in 
>>> a variety of attacks, from information disclosure to device compromise.
>>> 
>>> Threat severity: High, possibly Critical depending on usage
>>> 
>>> == Regular web content (unauthenticated) ==
>>> Use cases for unauthenticated code: Same
>>> 
>>> Authorization model for normal content: None?
>>> 
>>> Authorization model for installed content: Implicit
>>> 
>>> Potential mitigations: Airplane mode?
>>> 
>>> == Privileged (approved by app store) ==
>>> Use cases for privileged code: Same
>>> 
>>> Authorization model: Implicit
>>> 
>>> Potential mitigations: Same
>>> 
>>> == Certified (system-critical apps) ==
>>> Use cases for certified code:  Do we use this API for any system-sensitive 
>>> operations, like app updates, payments, etc?
>>> 
>>> Authorization model: Implicit
>>> 
>>> Potential mitigations: Same
>>> 
>>> __NOTOC__
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> dev-webapps mailing list
>>> [email protected]
>>> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-webapps
> 

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