Lets go over the list. When accessing the menu inside the restaurant, they'll know that

• The phone is inside the restaurant
• The phone was inside the restaurant at the time you were sitting there
• The phone was connected to the nearest cell tower to the restaurant (they can't actually know this, only the carrier can, but they can guess.)
• Metadata your browser sends to every single page you request, which you can configure to be anything.

This does not seem nefarious.

They'll also know which IP your phone happened to be assigned at the moment you requested the page. With a warrant, the police will be able to go to your carrier and get their customer records for you. I suppose that's vaguely annoying, but you can use a cheap VPN service to foil this. Unless you use a VPN they might also be able to run a traceroute back to your IP, which probably reveals which carrier you are using.

I don't think they'll be able to get the phone IMEI or any other hardware identifiers, since that's simply not accessible to JavaScript in the browser, and it's not being sent as headers when requesting any page. I could be wrong about that. Same with wifi or signal strength, and network status - the best they could do would be to try to load a massive resource to do a speed test and find out how much bandwidth your phone happened to have while inside that restaurant.

The real annoyance about tracking on the web, is cross site tracking, such as when one site embeds a tracking-script from Facebook or Google which lets them correlate your pageview across all sites using those trackers. If you know what you're doing you can block that, but it's hassle.

It gets worse though :-)

When you sit down at the restaurant, they'll know that you are there, and what time it is. They'll know what your face looks like, what you're wearing, approximate height and body mass, and when the waitress comes by to take your order, she'll know if you have dubious personal hygiene. Unless you pay cash, or with an exotic anonymous card, they'll know who you are as well.

Lets go over the list. When accessing the menu inside the restaurant, they'll know that

• The phone is inside the restaurant
• The phone was inside the restaurant at the time you were sitting there
• The phone was connected to the nearest cell tower to the restaurant (they can't actually know this, only the carrier can, but they can guess.)
• Metadata your browser sends to every single page you request, which you can configure to be anything.

This does not seem nefarious.

They'll also know which IP your phone happened to be assigned at the moment you requested the page. With a warrant, the police will be able to go to your carrier and get their customer records for you.

I suppose that's vaguely annoying, but you can use a cheap VPN service to foil this. Unless you use a VPN they might also be able to run a traceroute back to your IP, which probably reveals which carrier you are using.

I don't think they'll be able to get the phone IMEI or any other hardware identifiers, since that's simply not accessible to JavaScript in the browser, and it's not being sent as headers when requesting any page. I could be wrong about that. Same with wifi or signal strength, and network status - the best they could do would be to try to load a massive resource to do a speed test and find out how much bandwidth your phone happened to have while inside that restaurant.

The real annoyance about tracking on the web, is cross site tracking, such as when one site embeds a tracking-script from Facebook or Google which lets them correlate your pageview across all sites using those trackers. If you know what you're doing you can block that, but it's hassle.

It gets worse though :-)

When you sit down at the restaurant, they'll know that you are there, and what time it is. They'll know what your face looks like, what you're wearing, approximate height and body mass, and when the waitress comes by to take your order, she'll know if you have dubious personal hygiene. Unless you pay cash, or with an exotic anonymous card, they'll know who you are as well.

Lets go over the list. When accessing the menu inside the restaurant, they'll know that

• The phone is inside the restaurant
• The phone was inside the restaurant at the time you were sitting there
• The phone was connected to the nearest cell tower to the restaurant
• Metadata your browser sends to every single page you request, which you can configure to be anything.

This does not seem nefarious.

They'll also know which IP your phone happened to be assigned at the moment you requested the page. With a warrant, the police will be able to go to your carrier and get their customer records for you.

I suppose that's vaguely annoying, but you can use a cheap VPN service to foil this.

I don't think they'll be able to get the phone IMEI or any other hardware identifiers, since that's simply not accessible to JavaScript in the browser, and it's not being sent as headers when requesting any page. I could be wrong about that. Same with wifi or signal strength, and network status - the best they could do would be to try to load a massive resource to do a speed test and find out how much bandwidth your phone happened to have while inside that restaurant.

It gets worse though :-)

When you sit down at the restaurant, they'll know that you are there. They'll know what your face looks like, what you're wearing, and when the waitress comes by to take your order, she'll know if you have dubious personal hygiene. Unless you pay cash, or with an exotic anonymous card, they'll know who you are as well.

Lets go over the list. When accessing the menu inside the restaurant, they'll know that

• The phone is inside the restaurant
• The phone was inside the restaurant at the time you were sitting there
• The phone was connected to the nearest cell tower to the restaurant
• Metadata your browser sends to every single page you request, which you can configure to be anything.

This does not seem nefarious.

They'll also know which IP your phone happened to be assigned at the moment you requested the page. With a warrant, the police will be able to go to your carrier and get their customer records for you.

I suppose that's vaguely annoying, but you can use a cheap VPN service to skip this also.

I don't think they'll be able to get the phone IMEI or any other hardware identifiers, since that's simply not accessible to JavaScript in the browser, and it's not being sent as headers when requesting any page. Same with wifi or signal strength, and network status - the best they could do would be to try to load a massive resource to do a speed test and find out how much bandwidth your phone happened to have while inside that restaurant.

It gets worse though :-)

When you sit down at the restaurant, they'll know that you are there. They'll know what your face looks like, what you're wearing, and when the waitress comes by to take your order, she'll know if you have dubious personal hygiene.