LinkedIn is scanning browser extensions

Some truly straight-shooters should be pointing the finger very accurately to where all this is coming from.

Anybody who has a team committed to non-below-average websites should be able to screen applicants against a roster of known enshittifiers.

It may be too late to nip it in the bud, but there's no reason to allow these individuals to continue unabated, much less keep growing so annoyingly.

What's wrong with some people anyway?

Browser fingerprinting is the new norm. LinkedIn just didn't disclose it in their privacy policy. They do mention canvas fingerprinting and collecting other signals, but not specifically this extension enumeration stuff.

But fingerprinting is used to track people even without cookies. Take a look at this for some further reading: https://404privacy.com/blog/browser-fingerprinting-is-the-ad...

Is there anything else making a new start right now with as well-known a name? That could make a major difference in building critical mass fast enough.

Now Friendster is already moving in its own new direction [0], but it would still be a good portal to a separate new jobs board that only needs to start out with zero bullshit and one key thing a little bit better than Linkedin in some very important area, then gradually diverge further from there if necessary.

No need to even try to replace Linkedin (who wants another one of those?), the only thing that a better option needs to have to become sustainable, is to be better for a few million visitors on a regular basis. Maybe way fewer would be adequate if done right, IDK.

I don't think Friendster is going to stop short of that, so there you go.

Plus IIRC Friendster is already paid for and owes nobody anything. If it stays that way it could turn out to be a surprising advantage. No matter how big Linkedin is I can only imagine that it is "mortgaged" up the wazoo like anything else, it's a whale like no other.

Friendster could go into the kind of shallow water where it can thrive, and Linkedin would be effectively beached.

[0] Very cool the way their plan for physical contact or proximity looks like it will restrict bot activity just when it's needed most, while accepting the limitation to unbridled growth that this implies.

The LLM writing style is simply not true. I am a high-school English teacher and if my students caught me using AI to do my writing, they'd rip me to pieces.

I included the GH link as a source of proof. While I did read the browsergate piece and ended up publishing my article as a result of, I noticed this was happening months ago because I am a developer myself and saw this very strange behavior in the LinkedIn dev console. The nature of my work is that I spend many hours sometimes staring at the dev tools to debug my JS injection, CSP rewriting, and header modification that 404 does.

Is 404 a tool to stop this? Yes. But that's the point. The reason why this type of thing is allowed to happen, browser fingerprinting, is because the public is unaware of it, so trying to educate the public is a part of my outreach. There are almost no tools on the market that allow for browser fingerprinting protection. Mullvad and Tor are close options, but they're often met with their own levels of scrutiny just for using their tools. For example, my school blocks the Tor network from being accessed altogether. Some websites can block the Tor fingerprint.

The original source is more technical, of course, but I was also in communication with the Browsergate team and continue to be so this is not a one-off journalist just trying to peddle his project. This has been my life for the last 2 years and I don't appreciate you discounting the work that privacy advocates do by splitting hairs and mincing my words.

While it may not be things I would think to install, maybe they're not extensions someone with certain affiliations would think to install.