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“Stylish” browser extension steals all your internet history

robertheaton.com

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Re: “Stylish” browser extension steals all your internet history

#121

Post by bovine3dom »

inetknght wrote: post #120
bovine3dom wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then ask for more permissions. I agree with you. As another reply to you states, however, Firefox doesn't currently let me ask. You have to kind of go hunting for it. > And if you're not adding a new feature, then why do you need more permissions? Firefox does not let me explain why the permissions are needed. It would be nice if we could have a little blurb where we can state our case next to each permission. Our…

Firefox and Chromium are both open source. If you don't like the way it works, then work with the teams to build a better experience.

I can kind of understand that charge when it is levelled about people complaining about Quantum and doing nothing about it, but I already spend countless hours a week working on a replacement for an extension that died because of Quantum.

How much more time can I reasonably be expected to donate? Just trying to find duplicates on the BMO could take ages.

Complaining into the void on the internet takes much less time and makes me feel better :)

Re: “Stylish” browser extension steals all your internet history

#122

Post by mjgoeke »

For those actively using Stylish and needing to switch:

'"Stylus" is a fork of the popular Stylish extension which can be used to restyle the web. Not "ish", but "us", as in "us" the actual users. Stylus is a fork of Stylish that is based on the source code of version 1.5.2, which was the most up-to-date version before the original developer stopped working on the project. The objective in creating Stylus was to remove any and all analytics, and return to a more user-friendly UI. We recognize that the ability to transfer your database from Stylish is important, so this is the one and only feature we've implemented from the new version.' [1]

[1] https://add0n.com/stylus.html and https://github.com/openstyles/stylus

Re: “Stylish” browser extension steals all your internet history

#123

Post by e1ven »

_bxg1 wrote: post #102
e1ven wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Interesting - It looks like Firefox has an easy option to block them, but I don't see one in Chrome.

Re: “Stylish” browser extension steals all your internet history

#124

Post by pdimitar »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #106
pdimitar wrote: post #91

Sadly 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 pl…

Do you know the name of the extension in the Safari's addons store? I disabled Stylish the moment I read this article here but I have no replacement.

If you do write such an addon as you said, please advertise it here in HN!

Re: “Stylish” browser extension steals all your internet history

#125

Post by HelenePhisher »

Zren wrote: post #77

I'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…

You can extract the .crx without Javascript using this webservice: http://crxextractor.com/

Used it a couple of times in the past, it is a good one.

Re: “Stylish” browser extension steals all your internet history

#126

Post by HelenePhisher »

Volt wrote: post #118
HelenePhisher wrote: post #39

Tampermonkey seems to be a good alternative as well and is available for all major browsers. Does anyone have information on if the Safari Stylish Addon does the same shady things? It's available in the official App Store and was approved by Apple it seems.

I was curious about this too. The source is on GitHub ( https://github.com/350d/stylish ), but who knows if Apple checks that they're the same when they're approving it. Edit: I should note that it collects analytics, but it can be turned off in the preferences. I don't remember if it's on by default, but I suspect it is.

Yes, the option is called "Collect anonymous usage statistics" and is turned on by default. But I don't trust it anymore.

Tampermonkey is here BTW: https://tampermonkey.net/?browser=safari

I really love that one, it does a great job in Safari. Unfortunately, there is no Safari App Extension yet. Since I'm running Safari Preview and Safari 12 does not accept extensions from unknown sources anymore I'm out for now.

Re: “Stylish” browser extension steals all your internet history

#127

Post by sli »

phobosdeimos wrote: post #79
mcjiggerlog wrote: post #18

This is a huge problem for the extension ecosystem in general. Who originally publishes an extension may not be the same entity that is pushing you updates in two years time, and there's no way as a user to know this. I publish a few extensions [1] [2] [3] and have been contacted multiple times by companies asking to buy them for several thousand dollars. They told me the going rate was 0.20 USD per user. You can ima…

I disagree. Every time an add on is updated in FF I get directed to the patch notes. RTFM.

This is absolutely not universally true.

Re: “Stylish” browser extension steals all your internet history

#128

Post by kitsunesoba »

pdimitar wrote: post #124
kitsunesoba wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pl…

Do you know the name of the extension in the Safari's addons store? I disabled Stylish the moment I read this article here but I have no replacement. If you do write such an addon as you said, please advertise it here in HN!

Correction, in my previous reply I meant to say that the Safari version of Stylish (not stylus) has a different developer and doesn’t appear to share the Chrome/Firefox extension’s tracking issues.

The code for the safari version is available here: https://github.com/350d/stylish

With a quick glance it looks to include google analytics, but that’s only used on the extension’s settings page and doesn’t send browser history or anything like that. JS isn’t my forte, though, so if anybody else could take a look and confirm that’d be great.

Re: “Stylish” browser extension steals all your internet history

#129

Post by srgseg »

IngvarLynn wrote: post #93

"OneTab" is another popular extension with the same issue. Switched to ff+"tabs aside" since then.

That is absolutely not true. OneTab has never, ever transmitted any information about your tabs outside of your browser, and will never divulge them. I'm the developer. OneTab has never made a penny, and absolutely does and always will deliver on the privacy promise.
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