[gruez]

that's for internet connectivity checking, and it's an anonymous http request (no cookies). iOS/windows does it as well (not sure about linux), and I can't see how you can implement such a feature without phoning home to some server.

[swiley]

GNU/Linux doesn't do anything like that by default unless you where to write a script to.

I honestly don't see a good reason to do it although one of my friends pointed out that using TOR is probably one of the better ways to check for this since it won't rely on a specific server.

[icebraining]

Well, GNU/Linux itself is not an OS, but Ubuntu and Fedora do enable that check in NetworkManager by default, whereas Debian doesn't (for privacy reasons).

[zaarn]

Linux doesn't include a desktop or browser by default.

Firefox will make these requests as does Google Chrome and Chromium. NetworkManager will do them too and various GUI tools for network configuration will try it.

Otherwise Captive Portals would simply break your internet without notice.

[Avamander]

No cookies but an user agent and your IP, so basically your rough location in the world.

[anchpop]

www.example.com

[darklajid]

I don't think you can ship millions of devices that randomly hit on a URL that you don't control or own.

Example.com is for examples (so that if you copy & paste my code, you don't do weird things). I am not convinced that example.com would appreciate the worlds phones to use it at a whim..

(Plus, I'm not sure that's possible without controlling the domain. Not sure if the current ways to detect a capture portal are satisfied by a random 200 OK or actually _check the content_ of the reply. Which needs you to control said content)