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LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

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Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#641

Post by philipallstar »

jcgrillo wrote: post #431
ryandrake wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> There's no viable "grassroots" solution to the problem

Does something like running the duckduckgo extension not help?

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#642

Post by darepublic »

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…

linked in is scummy but yes I was puzzled by how linked in could scan your comouter from the browser. when i saw they meant extensions I thought aha.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#643

Post by OhMeadhbh »

mrguyorama wrote: post #426
b112 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E-ink is getting cheaper and cheaper, there's a lot of 6" screen devices for $100. If it dropped to $100 for a 11" screen, that would be a respectable size for a magazine. I cite eink as most are distraction free, or can be, and are very easy on the eyes. Such content would also suck with flashy ads too. It's pretty easy tech I think, it's just never hit a flash point. But it could.

You miss the point. We literally had all of this. We had regular, affordable, high quality printed media for every hobby and interest and industry, that you could get delivered to your home address and collect in your own archive if you want, and your local library could do the same. Those pieces of paper could not track anything about you. They tried, selling their subscriber lists, but that was the best tracking th…

I might recomment a middle ground before banning all internet advertising.

What if we limited advertising to images which don't set tracking cookies, so you would get something sort of like banner headlines. Maybe say the image had to be served from the same place as the rest of the content so you don't get to track readers with image trackers

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#644

Post by TheSkyHasEyes »

Beestie wrote: post #522

I don't have a linkedin acct. So imagine my shock when I "googled" myself and found a linkedin profile connecting my name to a company I presently have a consulting arrangement with (1099 not W2). I went ballistic and fired off an email to the consulting firm to take down the profile immediately or face legal action (a bluff). Couple days later, the company forwarded an email they received from linkedin confirming th…

Of all the reading I've done on this story, your comment so far is the only post which would explain why linkedin is even doing this.

If anyone else as any more info on the why, please share.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#646

Post by fsckboy »

islandfox100 wrote: post #590
m-schuetz wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scanning your computer is an entirely different thing than scanning browser extensions. By maximizing the expectation via "Illegally searching your computer", the truth suddenly appears harmless.

Where do browser extensions exist? I've got a dreadful feeling they might be on my computer.

>Where do browser extensions exist? I've got a dreadful feeling they might be on my computer.

all of the browser extensions I'm aware of are on planet earth, so i guess you'd have it linkedin is searching the planet for your browser extensions?

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#647

Post by IG_Semmelweiss »

orochimaaru wrote: post #608
ryandrake wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

One works for money. And money is important. Ethics isn’t going pay mortgage, send kids to university and all that other stuff. I’m not going to do things that are obviously illegal. But if I get a requirement that needs to be met and then the company legal team is responsible for the outcome. In short, you are not going to solve this problem blaming developer ethics. You need regulation. To get the right regulation…

You are transfering moral agency from yourself, to the government.

Will you do the same for your kids ? WOuld you let the government decide for you whats right, and what's wrong ?

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#648

Post by Beestie »

crazygringo wrote: post #631
Beestie wrote: post #522

I don't have a linkedin acct. So imagine my shock when I "googled" myself and found a linkedin profile connecting my name to a company I presently have a consulting arrangement with (1099 not W2). I went ballistic and fired off an email to the consulting firm to take down the profile immediately or face legal action (a bluff). Couple days later, the company forwarded an email they received from linkedin confirming th…

What's the path for that to even happen? Are companies now commonly uploading lists of employees to LinkedIn? Is this happening automatically because you got an e-mail account from the company and the company runs on MS Office and you're identified as am employee within it? What triggered it? This seems like somewhat of a scandal that deserves its own post, but it also needs a lot more details to be trustworthy and f…

I rather suspect the information was siphoned to linkedin from the payroll company the consulting firm was using. While there are a zillion small consulting firms, there are a small number of firms which process their payroll (whether to employees or independent contractors like myself). I have no evidence to back this up but after thinking it through, it made more sense than every little mom/pop/medium size niche company all cooperating with linkedin vs a hand full of mega payroll consolidators selling aggregated lists to linkedin. Again, speculation on my part.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#649

Post by stevenicr »

this morn while trying to decipher why computer was at 98% memory and 65% cpu

one of the culprits is https://li.protechts.net taking 2GB ram and 8% cpu.

DDG searches say this is something for linkedin. - I had two tabs for linkedin open but left behind as I opened other tabs to research.

So I had not reopened these tabs in over 9 hours and they are still just humming along sucking down almost 10% of cpu and a couple gigs of ram for what?

This is firefox with ublock origin - quick searches saw malwarebytes browser guard considered it (protechts.net) malware for a bit and then took it off the list of things it blocked / warned about.

Not sure this is related to the scan mentioned, but it may be related to the overall concerns about data and unknown usage of resources.

I'm considering blocking this at the dns hosts level at this point.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#650

Post by ryandrake »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #647
orochimaaru wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One works for money. And money is important. Ethics isn’t going pay mortgage, send kids to university and all that other stuff. I’m not going to do things that are obviously illegal. But if I get a requirement that needs to be met and then the company legal team is responsible for the outcome. In short, you are not going to solve this problem blaming developer ethics. You need regulation. To get the right regulation…

You are transfering moral agency from yourself, to the government. Will you do the same for your kids ? WOuld you let the government decide for you whats right, and what's wrong ?

Regulation does not necessarily need to be about deciding what's right and what's wrong. It's about making life better for people. That's supposed to be why we have government. If they are not improving people's lives, why do we even have them? Too many people see the government doing nothing to improve their lives and think there's totally nothing wrong with that.
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