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Firefox add-on with 7m downloads secretly tracks your browsing history

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Re: Firefox add-on with 7m downloads secretly tracks your browsing history

#22

Post by beagle3 »

willidiots wrote: post #18
cont4gious wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but absolutely none of that requires a unique identifier, which is where this article focuses most of it's gripe.

It seems like the "Integrated Traffic Rank indicator" could, if they wanted to distinguish uniqueness by users rather than unique IPs. Not that it's a good idea.

While I usually follow "do not ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity", I don't think this case is adequately explained by stupidity.

Re: Firefox add-on with 7m downloads secretly tracks your browsing history

#23

Post by timtadh »

Sargis wrote: post #20
MattBearman wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see some proof of that. Or in the words of Wikipedia, 'Citation Needed'

I'd like to see some proof as well. While there is some tracking involved in Chrome, I doubt they track browser history as well.

Perhaps the OP was referring the URL bar sending auto complete requests to google, which some consider tracking...

I don't really know of anything else Chrome does by default that "tracks your history" like this addon does.

Re: Firefox add-on with 7m downloads secretly tracks your browsing history

#25

Post by sudonim »

zerosanity wrote: post #12

A quick fgrep found the code making the requests to their servers: http://pastie.org/1932287 Edit: Further code browsing points to the "rank" feature. They rank all URLs that are http/https and the host isn't "localhost". I'm guessing, but if you turn of ranking in the preferences, it will stop logging your page views.

Why not try and track down Dima Sidorchenko (the guy in the header of the source)?

Google thinks the name is Dima Sidorenko and offers up this guy who is a programmer: http://twitter.com/#!/shadow1278

Unless it is Sidorchenko and Dima is a nickname in which case "Dmitriy Sidorchenko" might get better results.

Re: Firefox add-on with 7m downloads secretly tracks your browsing history

#27

Post by sudonim »

It also makes you wonder what "Verified Safe by Norton" means on the page for their video downloader.

http://www.ant.com/video-downloader

http://safeweb.norton.com/report/show?url=www.ant.com

The community rating contradicts norton's rating.... sigh.

Re: Firefox add-on with 7m downloads secretly tracks your browsing history

#28

Post by starwed »

EwanToo wrote: post #4
rsoto wrote: post #3

The lesson here: don't install shady addons, just as you aren't installing every damn toolbar out there. Also, this is enough to sue, isn't it?

Rather depressingly, this wasn't so much a shady add-on, as one that was meant to have been vetted by Mozilla. From the Mozilla Add-Ons FAQ @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/faq Are add-ons safe to install? Unless clearly marked otherwise, add-ons available from this gallery have been checked and approved by Mozilla's team of editors and are safe to install. We recommend that you only install approved add-on…

"Unless clearly marked otherwise"

This add-on was marked otherwise. (Well, according to the claims above.)

You can definitely argue that having unvetted add-ons on the site at all is bad, but your particular point isn't relevant.

Re: Firefox add-on with 7m downloads secretly tracks your browsing history

#29

Post by zerosanity »

sudonim wrote: post #25
zerosanity wrote: post #12

A quick fgrep found the code making the requests to their servers: http://pastie.org/1932287 Edit: Further code browsing points to the "rank" feature. They rank all URLs that are http/https and the host isn't "localhost". I'm guessing, but if you turn of ranking in the preferences, it will stop logging your page views.

Why not try and track down Dima Sidorchenko (the guy in the header of the source)? Google thinks the name is Dima Sidorenko and offers up this guy who is a programmer: http://twitter.com/#!/shadow1278 Unless it is Sidorchenko and Dima is a nickname in which case "Dmitriy Sidorchenko" might get better results.

The files I've looked at have been authored by many different people. (Seed, Zak, RigoNet, Camille, Dmitriy, Dima Sidorchenko, etc.) I don't think Dima is solely responsible for this. The company that had this written should be responsible.
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