LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions • Hacker News Board

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#431

Post by jcgrillo » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 4:18 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #230

haswell wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is probing your browser for installed extensions not "scanning your computer"? I think most people would interpret “scanning your computer” as breaking out of the confines the browser and gathering information from the computer itself. If this was happening, the magnitude of the scandal would be hard to overstate. But this is not happening. What actually is happening is still a problem. But the hyperbole underm…

> What the article describes sounds like what many devs would land on given the browser APIs available. > To reiterate, at no point am I saying this is good or acceptable. I think there’s a massive privacy problem in the tech industry that needs to be addressed. These two sentences highlight the underlying problem: Developers without an ethical backbone, or who are powerless to push back on unethical projects. What t…

You can't actually push back as an IC. Tech companies aren't structured that way. There's no employment protection of any kind, at least in the US. So the most you can do is protest and resign, or protest and be fired. Either way, it'll cost you your job. I've paid that price and it's steep. There's no viable "grassroots" solution to the problem, it needs to come from regulation. Managers need to serve time in prison, and companies need to be served meaningfully damaging fines. That's the only way anything will get done.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#432

Post by warkdarrior » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 4:19 PM UTC

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #342

Aurornis wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn’t fit the description of scraping by any normal definition. It’s a classic feature probe structure, where the features happen to be scraping extensions. I think it’s kind of funny that HN has gone so reactionary at tech companies that the comments here have become twisted against the anti-spam measures instituted on a website that will never trigger on any of their PCs, because HN users aren’t installing L…

HackerNews users used to be the type that would do the scraping, so they could Hack the data into whatever format or integration they desired. It's unfortunate to see folks here who don't support that – interoperability is at the heart of the Hacker Ethic. LinkedIn (along with any other big tech companies locking down and crippling their APIs) is wrong to even try to block it. Is it an issue of the resources scrapers…

LinkedIn has an API you can use at your convenience: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/linkedin/

Accessing other users' LinkedIn data via the API requires their OAuth consent, as it should be. But you are welcome to access your own data via the API.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#433

Post by Biganon » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 4:20 PM UTC

VladVladikoff wrote: post #69

>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.

Nothing in this sentence is evidence of AI.

What's next? "There's punctuation in the sentence, must be AI" ?

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#434

Post by nickburns » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 4:22 PM UTC

newsoftheday wrote: post #306

ronjouch wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ad blockers" nowadays do much more. From the horse’s mouth, which describes itself as a “wide-spectrum content blocker” [1]: “uBlock Origin (uBO) is a CPU and memory-efficient wide-spectrum content blocker for Chromium and Firefox. It blocks ads, trackers, coin miners, popups, annoying anti-blockers, malware sites, etc., by default using EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Peter Lowe's Blocklist, Online Malicious URL Blocklist,…

I'd like to install uBlock Origin, when I try, Chrome warns it needs the permission to, "Read and change all your data on all websites". That seems excessive, to give that much power to one extension. I currently use no extensions to keep my security posture high.

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Permissions

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Can-you-trust-uBlock-...

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Privacy-policy

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Why-don't-you-accept-...

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#435

Post by dcdc123 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 4:23 PM UTC

mewmewblobcat wrote: post #184

j45 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ad blockers focus on ads, not fingerprinting.

Depends on what lists you use. If you use uBlock Origin, and enable most of the lists, it'll target both.

I use uBlock Origin with basically every filter list enabled on Brave with their default blocker enabled. I just confirmed that this does not prevent the script from loading and scanning extensions. The browser tools network tab on LinkedIn is absolutely frightening.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#436

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 4:23 PM UTC

hnuser435 wrote: post #409

Wish they'd add a little more to what end-users can do about it like switch to a non chrome-based browser.

It's a call for funding. I suspect the answer they want, is click on a donation link; regardless of which browser you're using.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#437

Post by cachius » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 4:24 PM UTC

haswell wrote: 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…

> expect to find in modern browser fingerprinting

No. Don't need extensions for that. See how Cloudflare Turnstile does it, recently popped up at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47566865 cause ChatGPT uses it now:

Layer 1: Browser Fingerprint WebGL (8 properties): UNMASKED_VENDOR_WEBGL, UNMASKED_RENDERER_WEBGL, WEBGL_debug_renderer_info, getExtension, getParameter, getContext, canvas, webgl

Screen (8): colorDepth, pixelDepth, width, height, availWidth, availHeight, availLeft, availTop

Hardware (5): hardwareConcurrency, deviceMemory, maxTouchPoints, platform, vendor

Font measurement (4): fontFamily, fontSize, getBoundingClientRect, innerText. Creates a hidden div, sets a font, measures rendered text dimensions, removes the element.

DOM probing (8): createElement, appendChild, removeChild, div, style, position, visibility, ariaHidden

Storage (5): storage, quota, estimate, setItem, usage. Also writes the fingerprint to localStorage under key 6f376b6560133c2c for persistence across page loads.

Scanning for 6000 extensions is anti-competitive, surveillant and immoral.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#438

Post by franktankbank » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 4:26 PM UTC

luxuryballs wrote: post #247

gwerbin wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost certainly they are using that for audience segmentation and ad targeting. Clever and disgusting. This isn't the invention of some evil moustache-twirling executive, this was the invention of an employee or group of employees who value money more than morals. We should think of such employees as henchmen.

if they do a better job at showing me an ad that might be relevant to me, how is that disgusting? if I have to see an ad at all I at least want them to give it their best shot

What if someone makes an ad thats not an ad at all, maybe its a rabbithole designed to fuck with you. Maybe its designed to enrage you.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#439

Post by ACow_Adonis » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 4:27 PM UTC

integralid wrote: post #420

lastofthemojito wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is why I run ad blockers. It's pretty wild that we live in a world where the actual FBI has recommended we use ad blockers to protect ourselves, and if everyone actually listened, much of the Internet (and economy) as we know it would disappear. The FBI is like "you should protect yourself from the way that the third largest company in the world does business", and the average person's response is "nah, that w…

>the average person's response is "nah, that would take at least a couple of minutes of my time, As a data point I, a technical person who tweaks his computer a lot, was against adblocking for moral reasons (as a part of perceived social contract, where internet is free because of ads). Only later I changed mi mind on this because I became more privacy aware.

You mean the internet you pay to access and which was around before the ads were even on it? That internet?

I'm not trying to be mean I'm just trying to historically parse your sentence/belief.

Because for me this is a simplified analogy of what happened on the internet:

a) we opened a club house called the internet in the early 1990s, just after the time of BBSs

b) a few years later a new guy called commercial business turned up and started using our club house and fucking around with our stuff

c) commercial business started going around our club house rearranging the furniture and putting graffiti everywhere saying the internet is here and free because of it. We're pretty sure it might have even pissed in the hallway rather than use the toilet and the whole place is smelling awful.

d) the rest of us started breaking out the scrubbing brushes and mops (ad blockers, extensions, VPNs, etc) trying to clean up after it

e) some of its friends turned up and started repeating something about social contracts and how business and ads built this internet place

f) the rest of us keep crying into our hands just trying to meet up, break out the slop buckets to clean up the vomit in the kitchen and some of us now have to wear gloves and condoms just to share things with our friends and stop the whole place collapsing

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#440

Post by order-matters » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 4:29 PM UTC

FloorEgg wrote: post #397

kbelder wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's no method or structure in place to pay a website a fraction of a cent. Ads are the only way we've found that actually implements a form of microtransactions... paying a tenth of a penny for a sliver of attention. I don't want to defend ads, but whatever replaces them is going to be very disruptive. Maybe better, but very different.

In 2023 I did a deep dive into the crypto community with two main questions: - do these people understand the principles of making good products? - is anyone clearly working towards a microtransaction system that could replace advertising and subscription models? After attending two conferences, hundreds of conversations and hours spent researching, my conclusion to both questions was no. The community felt more like…

I have also done similar research because I wanted to build something to handle microtransactions on a personal website that could scale if adopted to be usable by everyone if they wanted.

I looked at crypto currency because it seems like the obvious naive solution. it doesnt work. the cost of the transaction itself far outweighs the value of the transaction when dealing with fractions of a cent. you want an entire network to be updating ledgers with ~millions of records per ~$1000 moved. the fundamental tech of crypto leans towards slower, higher value transactions than high volume, small transactions. Lots of efforts have been made with some coins to bring down the bar of "high value, low volume" to meet everyday consumer usage rates and values - but a transaction history at the scale of every ad impression for every person is a tough ask and would perpetually be in an uphill battle against energy costs.

Ultimately, the conclusion I came to is that the service would need to be centralized, and likely treated as cash by not keeping track of history. Centralized company creates "web credits", user spends $5 for 10,000 credits, these credits are consumed when they visit websites. Websites collect a few credits from each user, and cash out with the centralized company. The issue is that since it would cost more to track and store all the transactions than the value of the transactions themselves, you have to fully trust the company to properly manage the balances.

I started building it and since I would be handling, exchanging, and storing real currency - it seemed subject to a lot of regulations. It is like a combination bank and casino.

i've thought about finishing the project and using disclaimers that buying credits legally owes the user nothing, and collecting credits legally owes the websites nothing, and operating on a trust system - but any smart person would see the potential for a rug pull on that and i figured there would not be much interest.

The alternative route of adhering to all the banking regulations to get the proper insurances needed to make the commitments necessary to users and websites to guarantee exchange between credits and $ seemed like too much for 1 person to take on as a side project for free