I admit one of the extensions from the list is mine. But is not as malicious or spammy as some like to picture it. Most of them are complements, addons to help the user with their CRM. I don´t know of any intended to steal data ( i believe they will use scrapers or other ways instead of asking users to pay for an extension) There are well know CRMs like Hubspot or SOHO that aim to sync data. Yes, some others are used to send messages to connections.. just as unsolicited as Inmails, the linkedin paid version( but at least is to connections).
They also block extensions that block their ads and extensions like help users to filter out "sponsored " content ( we did that)
Regarding GDPR , even LInkedin says Is not actually their data but the users are data controllers ( owners) https://legal.linkedin.com/dpa . Obviously, this is not Ok with LinkedIn because they are a walled garden and not an open platform. The points is they do not let the user decide, customize or adapt their experience to suit their needs. Any feature that is not in their revenues agenda, gets killed even if thousands of users cry for it ( happens regularly ) and they do not let anyone else offer it.
Nobody likes spam , but is up the user no to do it - is like if your gmail will not let you send an email to more than one person at a time or be conneted to any other app ( yes, I know there are limits in gmail ). Notice that is not the legal way that Linkedin takes to stop these services because in reality, they are a monopoly ( and as pointed earlier Courts has ruled against Linkedin). Neither they use a educational or marketing path telling the users why is better FOR THEM not to use those extensions. No, they use FUD ( fear, uncertainty & doubt) to scare users and cancel the Linkedin of the people who create this "competition" ..it happened to me, to the people of hunter.io, findthatlead and many others. Mafia style.
This is not a moral justification from me, it is a business decision to offer extensions to give capabilities that people want.
How LinkedIn detects browser extensions
111–113 of 113 posts
Re: How LinkedIn detects browser extensions
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine an extension modifying a page and adding an image. How would it allow the image to load if that wasn’t possible?
I was thinking if an image is injected, it'd be injected by a script loaded from the plugin thus trusted.
It’s a logical thought but that isn’t how it works.
A script doesn’t really inject an image, it injects an image tag which contains a reference to the image. As the image gets loaded there is no check who created the tag.
Re: How LinkedIn detects browser extensions
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's a cat and mouse game. The more that Linkedin publishes about their anti-spam techniques, the more information spammers have to try to evade those anti-spam techniques.
It can seem that way with server-side anti-scraping techniques with brute force detection and the like. But at some point you have to accept that playing the game on the client-side needs to stop escalating once you're making dozens of local extension resource requests in a user's browser. It makes me want to publish and maintain a legit scraper for LinkedIn that replicates human interaction. They'd DMCA the repo I'm…
Would being interested in collaborating on something like this.