This has been going on for years and Google has done nothing about it. These days I don't use any extensions where a major organization's reputation doesn't depend on them not becoming spyware. Truly a shame; I used to get a lot of benefit out of extensions, including a similar one named Stylebot, but now I don't trust anything other than Adblock Plus and the React Developer Tools to not covertly become malicious.
“Stylish” browser extension steals all your internet history
101–110 of 161 posts
Re: “Stylish” browser extension steals all your internet history
#102I've gotten annoyed enough to just copy the source from most of my extensions (located at `~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Extensions/`), remove the update stuff from the `metadata.json` and load them as developer extensions so they never update. It's easy enough to update them + audit the code when something breaks. The hardest part is downloading the new code (.crx) without installing it, I had to write javascript…
I'm glad that workflow works for you. I'm curious though - What about it is better than turning off automatic updates for addons?
Last I checked, there is no option to turn off automatic updates. Maybe that's changed.
Re: “Stylish” browser extension steals all your internet history
#103This has been going on for years and Google has done nothing about it. These days I don't use any extensions where a major organization's reputation doesn't depend on them not becoming spyware. Truly a shame; I used to get a lot of benefit out of extensions, including a similar one named Stylebot, but now I don't trust anything other than Adblock Plus and the React Developer Tools to not covertly become malicious.
You probably shouldn't trust AB+ either (but switch to uBlock instead)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adblock_Plus#Controversy_over_...
Re: “Stylish” browser extension steals all your internet history
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other side of the coin, Firefox makes it quite hard to push updates to users that require more permissions, requiring manual intervention to update. It signifies this with a small muted yellow exclamation mark on the hamburger menu, which is really hard to see. I've not received my own updates for weeks a few times because I haven't noticed the warning, and about a third of our users are on ancient versions pr…
New permissions shouldn't be taken lightly. One day you'll install an extension that access only on a specific site, and the next day it's requesting access to all your bookmarks, location data, history etc. If you make it into a next next next dialogue box you're implementing an easily abused dark pattern. A better approach would be to allow extension upgrades, irrespective of permissions. If a user chooses to deny…
Why not just return empty datasets to extensions that ask for too much? Empty history, empty address book, white noise for camera and microphones, etc. Then it would be possible not only to ‘accept’ what it does or uninstall, but seamlessly deny what you don’t want.
Re: “Stylish” browser extension steals all your internet history
#105It took me less than a minute to install Stylus and import all my userstyles from Stylish.
The headache for me was that the stylesheets are transferred, but the applied domains are not. I've got a system where I use a set of standard styles applied broadly against many sites. E.g., Annoyances -- applied globally to all websites by default: https://pastebin.com/raw/GrE9KX6D Local Gifs: https://pastebin.com/raw/tn7cqGtJ (Exceptions to global gif filtering) The following break on many sites too much to be app…
One of those (either annoyances, headers, or popups) broke a fork of Stylish. I'd click on the icon in the toolbar and the drop-down wouldn't appear. I noticed the user style also broke AWS navigation.
Re: “Stylish” browser extension steals all your internet history
#106Sadly Stylus is not in the Safari's plugins store. Any alternatives for Mac users?
I’ll have to double check and make sure but as far as I know the safari version of stylus doesn’t do this — it’s written and maintained by a totally different developer.
I’m planning to write my own Safari stylesheet extension some time in the coming months, though, because old style Safari extensions are being phased out in favor of Safari app extensions and I don’t know if the dev of the Safari stylish extension plans to make the leap.
Re: “Stylish” browser extension steals all your internet history
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
The headache for me was that the stylesheets are transferred, but the applied domains are not. I've got a system where I use a set of standard styles applied broadly against many sites. E.g., Annoyances -- applied globally to all websites by default: https://pastebin.com/raw/GrE9KX6D Local Gifs: https://pastebin.com/raw/tn7cqGtJ (Exceptions to global gif filtering) The following break on many sites too much to be app…
One of those (either annoyances, headers, or popups) broke a fork of Stylish. I'd click on the icon in the toolbar and the drop-down wouldn't appear. I noticed the user style also broke AWS navigation.
None of those sheets except for Annoyances should be applied globally.
I don't guarantee Annoyances won't break other things, but I do guarantee that the others will.
Assign the to a nonexistent URL or domain initially, or disable them.
If you've got specific bugs with the Annoyances sheet ... I may be able to address them.
My usual first-stop debugging tools are adding either an outline or background colour to an element:
outline: solid 2px red;
background: #faa;
I'm also finding that the shift to "display: flex;" styles is breaking some of my assumptions. It's no longer safe to presume that everything is displayed as one of block, inline-block, or inline.
Position directives are also problematic: initial, static, relative, absolute.
That said: I've evolved those styles over a few years, and they tend to work reasonably well. Some nursemaiding required.
Re: “Stylish” browser extension steals all your internet history
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are two, similar, though different, extensions. uBlock origin is a dedicated, quite-good, low-fuss, ad blocker. uMatrix is a much more general, very powerful, though somewhat fussy, general Web capabilities manager. If you don't mind fiddling with sites periodically, it's very strongly recommended, but for user populations who don't do this or grasp technology poorly, it will require some fairly close managing,…
If the site loads tons of crapware then the site is broken regardless of whether or not uMatrix blocked things.
If you've not been paying attention or specifically trying to counter that trend, you'd be amazed at how complex a typical site is. Even those which otherwise appear clean.
Re: “Stylish” browser extension steals all your internet history
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
New permissions shouldn't be taken lightly. One day you'll install an extension that access only on a specific site, and the next day it's requesting access to all your bookmarks, location data, history etc. If you make it into a next next next dialogue box you're implementing an easily abused dark pattern. A better approach would be to allow extension upgrades, irrespective of permissions. If a user chooses to deny…
Why not just return empty datasets to extensions that ask for too much? Empty history, empty address book, white noise for camera and microphones, etc. Then it would be possible not only to ‘accept’ what it does or uninstall, but seamlessly deny what you don’t want.
Yes, agree!
Re: “Stylish” browser extension steals all your internet history
#110Isn't it a common knowledge? People were massively switching to Stylus long time ago.
I didn't know until today. I'm annoyed because I never noticed the opt-out checkbox. It feels almost like I've been hacked... my browser history I thought was my own private business, is actually in the hands of a some marketing company.