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Mozilla stops distribution of WOT addon

news.ycombinator.com

31–40 of 84 posts

Re: Mozilla stops distribution of WOT addon

#31
post #13

Such innovation .. pure evil. What's the takeaway? Not to install any browser add-on? On a serious note, I guess that it might be safer to to run a browser in a Docker container and use one instance to browser only site. The question is that how feasible it would be?

You can use Chrome profiles to create private "sandbox" for certain extensions. Put for example webdev related to extensions in separate profile, which you don't use for daily surfing.

Re: Mozilla stops distribution of WOT addon

#32
post #17
post #15

Here is the blog entry of the Journalist Mike Kuketz, explaining in detail how he uncovered the fraud, unfortunately only in German. This includes samples of the questionable GET and POST Requests, as well as a link to a commit to the WOT sources on GitHub, which introduced the necessary changes ... https://www.kuketz-blog.de/wot-addon-wie-ein-browser-addon-s... The commit referenced in the blog: https://github.com/m…

And by the way, he also suggests in his blog post that Ghostery and Adblock Plus might as well sell browser histories as WOT does. There might be even more.

I just stick with EFF Privacy Badger.

https://www.eff.org/privacybadger

Re: Mozilla stops distribution of WOT addon

#33
post #19

So basically I should uninstall it, correct? Does anyone know of anything to replace it?

You can create multiple profiles in firefox with various level of security settings. Use noscript for unknown websites in anonymous ff profile.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-...

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/noscript/

I read ghacks blog frequently to keep myself up to date with new features being added in Firefox. Follow this blog and read their previous articles to learn how to stay safe in online world.

http://www.ghacks.net/

this link is also helpful to stay safe

https://www.privacytools.io/

Re: Mozilla stops distribution of WOT addon

#34
post #29
post #16

What's interesting is how the story completely failed to make the news in the English-speaking net for several days. The story broke on Tuesday (CET), outside Germany it was only picked up by ghacks until now...

Ghacks is shadowbanned on HN for some reason. I vouched for this particular story, but it didn't get traction :( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12850214

I don't think I've ever consciously visited their site, so no idea how well ghacks ranks as a source...

The story was curiously absent from HN and any other site I frequent, so I checked Google and as of yesterday it only found ghacks outside the German bubble.

Re: Mozilla stops distribution of WOT addon

#35
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know what would be a great way to prevent this? Every data send by an extension should be user viewable. Here's the json file (or maybe something better) that we are posting, press Agree to send it

No, the only thing that will work is to pummel guilty companies into the ground with fines. But you can bet GooBookSoft will lobby against that like their lives depended on abusing customer data. And they do depend on it.

Nope. I'm going for FaceGooSoft or FaceGleSoft. First writes better. Second sounds better. But you can have the copyrite because all are fun.

Re: Mozilla stops distribution of WOT addon

#36
post #15

Here is the blog entry of the Journalist Mike Kuketz, explaining in detail how he uncovered the fraud, unfortunately only in German. This includes samples of the questionable GET and POST Requests, as well as a link to a commit to the WOT sources on GitHub, which introduced the necessary changes ... https://www.kuketz-blog.de/wot-addon-wie-ein-browser-addon-s... The commit referenced in the blog: https://github.com/m…

Firefox really needs to start to disable extensions (but enable exceptions) when in private mode.

And maybe it is time to completely forbid data logging in browser addons. Then suspicious activity, like the linked commit would have caused, could be detected.

Re: Mozilla stops distribution of WOT addon

#37
on android i used to go pretty extreme and edit hosts file on a rooted phone. you can find maintained lists for it they just zero out the address. for security i would also make all the edits i wanted for different things and then unroot.

for firefox there is also script blocker with the ability to white list adresses also remove history on close.

Re: Mozilla stops distribution of WOT addon

#38

All the other addons are completely trustable, of course. It also really helps that Firefox never deletes cookies by default and never tells you about this. We 'respect' your privacy, yes, we do! Really! Look, you will have only one google cookie when you start a very new firefox. We really respect your privacy, yes! We will reiterate that until you believe it, but never change our privacy destroying default settings…

Do you really think being logged out of every website every time you start your browser would be an acceptable default?

Re: Mozilla stops distribution of WOT addon

#39
It is a shame that Mozilla did not explain why they removed the addon on the addon page, instead we just find a boring 404 page: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wot-safe-brow...

They could have taken the opportunity to show that they care about user privacy and denounce WoT at the same time

Re: Mozilla stops distribution of WOT addon

#40
post #29
post #16

What's interesting is how the story completely failed to make the news in the English-speaking net for several days. The story broke on Tuesday (CET), outside Germany it was only picked up by ghacks until now...

Ghacks is shadowbanned on HN for some reason. I vouched for this particular story, but it didn't get traction :( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12850214

Could be because of the title: "Your browsing history may have been sold already"

It's not remotely comparable to the situation. "WOT addon is banned from browsers after selling users history to the highest bidder."

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