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Google's internal sso (which I accidentally stumbled upon) collects other endpoint-specific parameters to compose the digital signature (like browser window size and monitor size).

This feels more effective and less intrusive. Not sure why ebay went this rather weird and creepy way instead.

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Looking for fraud signs is my guess, people don't usually use eBay through TeamViewer so if it's on and the port is open then an otherwise normal transaction gets really suspicious for example. They're probably feeding the open port info into their model to determine fraud risk for user logins and transactions.

They may not even be using it actively yet because they'd need to gather a lot of example data to detect outliers.

how can they differentiate between idling tv server running on (all) my machines vs. active tv session?

I don't know if there's a detectable difference just looking at the ports; just having TeamViewer installed slightly increases the risk of any transaction being fraudulent though. I'm just trying to provide an example of how port data could be used for a meaningful purpose. Even just as an additional fingerprinting component it could be useful.

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