User Media Access Permissions and Privacy in WebRTC

Browser media control over your microphone and camera

Last week Dan and I listed the important topics relevant for WebRTC that were discussed at IETF 92^nd meeting. Here are more details about the access permission given to user’s microphone and camera and for how long this permission persists.

Highlights

If you are reading this blog I hope am sure you have participated in WebRTC sessions before. You probably noticed that you are not always requested to click on that Allow button in order to give access to your microphone and camera. Have you ever wondered why in some cases this is not required?

The answer to this is rather simple. If a web site is using HTTPS and you clicked Allow in the first time you visited that domain, in the following sessions you will not be asked to Allow for access. It will just assume you are good with giving access to your microphone and camera because you already gave this domain access to them before.

Originally the IETF security draft required having separate APIs for requesting access to user media (microphone and camera) for a single session vs. for multiple sessions. This was never really implemented in the standard.

After some debate over this, decision at IETF 92 was to leave intact this behavior and not give the user control over the duration of the access permission he is giving when clicking Allow (access for a single session or for multiple sessions).

You can have more fine grain control over this by clicking on the camera icon in the address bar and manage the browser media settings but that is for more advanced users.

Impact on my application

Following the original intentions of the IETF would have impacted your application and the way it requests access to user media. As concluded in the last IETF meeting, it looks like this will remain unchanged and there will be no further impact on existing applications.

Standards status

Decision was to make no change in the standard.

 

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