Surely by now you’ve at least heard of RTL-SDR — a software project that let’s cheap TV tuner dongles work as a software-defined radios. A number of projects and tools have spun off the original effort, but in his latest video, [Tech Minds] shows off a particularly unique take. It’s a Web browser-based radio application that uses WebUSB, so it doesn’t require the installation of any application software. You can see the program operating in the video below.
There are a few things you should know. First, you need the correct USB drivers for your RTL-SDR. Second, your browser must support WebUSB, of course. Practically, that means you need a Chromium-type browser. You may have to configure your system to allow raw access to the USB port, too.
Watching the video, you can see that it works quite well. According to the comments, it will work with a phone, too, which is an interesting idea. The actual Web application is available as open source. It isn’t going to compete with a full-fledged SDR program, but it looked surprisingly complete.
These devices have grown from a curiosity to a major part of radio hacking over the years. Firefox users can’t use WebUSB — well, not directly, anyway.
Question is which one want to sell your data and privacy: Google or Microsoft?
The answer is usually “all of the above” for everyone except an extremely tiny cohort that invests enormous amounts of time and effort into avoiding it. I think that chicken has flown the coop
Avoid it?
Almost impossible.
Poison the well?
Not so hard.
I’ve recently come to appreciate ChatGPT.
Sure it’s a scam (99% anyhow, applications do exist), but it’s a scam that’s poisoning the worlds data.
All on the VCs dime.
No. It’s poisoning the end user’s experience.
It’s not doing much to your user data/metrics.
To poison user metrics, you would have to create a large scale tool that ‘used’ the Internet, while ‘laundering’ your real usage.
One can easily protect from most of the tracking – but most are not willing to do it because they are lazy.
This is not a question “all or nothing”. Few plugins, pihole, not being logged in to all services all the time (clear your cookies!!) etc. Do not use native apps on your phone .. Do not use Android.
It’s just easier fool yourself by saying “chicken has left the coop so I dont’ have to do a damn thing about this” than actually doing something to prevent it.
The answer is Mozilla, they just deleted promise to ‘never sell’ your data. Mozilla is in hiring frenzy for ad people. Mozilla is an advertising company now.
The app mentioned in this article does only work in spyware-by-factory browsers like Chrome and Edge.
Your data and privacy? Google can get that now even if you go full Ted Kaczynski.
There are lots of open source SDR programs you can use that don’t require a spyware filled browser.
Check out SDR++, SDRangel, CubicSDR, and GQRX. They are all cross platform and SDR++ supports android too.
Gqrx is good, I have it running here most of the time in Manjaro.
Thanks for the list of software for me to try, Mike and Cody. I didn’t even know those existed. :)
webusb. what could possibly go wrong…
Watching the video, I see that the modes are limited, like gqrx. On 440 I see some 2 MHz-wide digital signals that I don’t know what it is and how to decode it. Any helpful suggestions or links? :-)
Some misinformation going on here…
One can minimize their data exposure on the internet: it requires both knowledge and work. Most people do not know what to do and many that do are lazy about it. Is it possible to 100% eliminate unwanted snooping? Yes, if you forego many/most of the normal activities (and growing required governmental activities); however, this is too great a burden for over 99% of people that use the internet.
WebUSB/WebBLE as a technology can be made “safe” to a point, but that again requires strong transparency, a system that isn’t trying to secretly send telemetry, and user knowledge without laziness. For profit companies have strong incentive to send telemetry and malware increases eavesdropping, keylogging… theft & worse (tracking your personal location for harm) activities
The issue is that the tradeoffs of risk vs. reward are being pushed to reward daily by companies gaming the internet. And people are convinced the risk is worth it. Time will tell, but the path looks really bad over time.
Some people throw up their hands and give up, some are just unaware, some actively try to prevent all this tracking. It is a losing battle in an UNCHECKED capitalistic society. When governments are in the pockets of growing companies with so much money they can just offer more and more money over time to bend the laws away from peoples’ interests towards profit interest, then the only ultimate answer will be oppression or revolution (only a generation from now if allowed). The middle class is a $9T group (in the USA) so it will be a little while to bleed them down to poverty, so this is the frog in the heated pot of water.
Good luck with however you approach this. Know that it does not have to be a losing battle, but it takes conscious effort… wait… back to watching YouTube, Netflix, and doomscrolling on Insta while dissipating my angry thoughts through social media complaints rather than physical protesting…