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LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

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Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#81
post #4

[flagged]

Several years ago I heard the company I worked for say they had a way to get notified if it seemed like an employee might be thinking of leaving, so they could take some kind of action. I now wonder if LinkedIn, or various job sites, were selling them data.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#82
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, I think we should push back hard on behavior like this. What business is it of LinkedIn's what browser extensions I have installed? I think the framing for this is appropriate.

To broaden my point, I think we’d find that many websites we use are doing this. My point isn’t that this is acceptable or that we shouldn’t push back against it. We should. My point is that this doesn’t sound particularly surprising or unique to LinkedIn, and that the framing of the article seems a bit misleading as a result.

> To broaden my point, I think we’d find that many websites we use are doing this.

Your point of "I think we’d find that many websites we use are doing this" doesn't make LinkedIn's behavior ok!

By your logic, if our privacy rights are invaded which is illegal in most jurisdiction, and then it become ok because many companies do illegal things??

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#83
post #14

The headline seems pretty misleading. Here’s what seems to actually be going on: > Every time you open LinkedIn in a Chrome-based browser, LinkedIn’s JavaScript executes a silent scan of your installed browser extensions. The scan probes for thousands of specific extensions by ID, collects the results, encrypts them, and transmits them to LinkedIn’s servers. This does seem invasive. It also seems like what I’d expect…

It is likely in response to scraping. Linked in is heavily scraped by scammers who do the BEC scams. So linked in is trying to find ways to link together banned accounts, to handle their ban evasion.

I run a site which attracts a lot of unsavoury people who need to be banned from our services, and tracking them to reban them when they come back is a big part of what makes our product better than others in the industry. I do not care at all about actually tracking good users, and I am not reselling this data, or anything malicious, it's entire purpose is literally to make the website more enjoyable for the good users.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#85
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, I think we should push back hard on behavior like this. What business is it of LinkedIn's what browser extensions I have installed? I think the framing for this is appropriate.

Why is it possible for a web site to determine what browser extensions I have installed? If there are legitimate uses, why isn't this gated behind a permission prompt, like things like location and camera?

[deleted]

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#86
post #14

The headline seems pretty misleading. Here’s what seems to actually be going on: > Every time you open LinkedIn in a Chrome-based browser, LinkedIn’s JavaScript executes a silent scan of your installed browser extensions. The scan probes for thousands of specific extensions by ID, collects the results, encrypts them, and transmits them to LinkedIn’s servers. This does seem invasive. It also seems like what I’d expect…

[dead]

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#88
post #14

The headline seems pretty misleading. Here’s what seems to actually be going on: > Every time you open LinkedIn in a Chrome-based browser, LinkedIn’s JavaScript executes a silent scan of your installed browser extensions. The scan probes for thousands of specific extensions by ID, collects the results, encrypts them, and transmits them to LinkedIn’s servers. This does seem invasive. It also seems like what I’d expect…

> I’ve come to mostly expect this behavior from most websites that run advertising code and this is why I run ad blockers. Expecting and accepting this kind of thing is why everyone feels the need to run an ad-blocker. An ad-blocker also isn’t full protection. It’s a cat and mouse game. Novel ideas on how to extract information about you, and influence behavior, will never be handled by ad-blockers until it becomes k…

To be clear, expecting != accepting.

The point was more that the headline frames this as some major revelation about LinkedIn, while the reality is that we’re getting probed and profiled by far more sites than most people realize.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#89

>The user is never asked. Never told. LinkedIn’s privacy policy does not mention it. OMG is literally every article written with LLMs these days I just can't anymore. It's all so tiring.

That's the intention. Make the internet so unbelievably shit that you just accept and move on.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#90
> Every time you open LinkedIn in a Chrome[actually Chromium]-based browser

There's a reason I continue to use Firefox (with uBlock Origin) and will never switch.

Also, when I got laid off from a previous job, I made a LinkedIn profile to help find a new job. Once I found a new job, I haven't logged into LinkedIn since - that was almost 2 years ago.

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