alt Hacker News> There are some semi-legitimate uses, like Discord using it to check if the app is installed by scanning some high-number ports (6463-6472)
I would not consider this a legitimate use. Websites have no business knowing what apps you have installed.
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robin_reala • last Tuesday at 2:31 PM
Zoom got busted for something similar five years ago now: https://www.zdnet.com/article/zoom-defends-use-of-local-web-...
I agree, yet at least you can kind of see where they're coming from.
I guess a better example would be the automatic hardware detection Lenovo Support offers [0] by pinging a local app (with some clear confirmation dialogs first). Asus seems to do the same thing.
uBlock Origin has a fair few explicit exceptions made [1] for cases like those (and other reasons) in their filter list to avoid breakages (notably Intel domains, the official Judiciary of Germany [2] (???), `figma.com`, `foldingathome.org`, etc).
0: https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/
1: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/blob/master/filters/...
2: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/23388 and https://www.bundesjustizamt.de/EN/Home/Home_node.html (they're trying to talk to a local identity verification app seems like, yet I find it quite funny)