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LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

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Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#401

Post by moffkalast »

j45 wrote: post #148
andersonpico wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is probing your browser for installed extensions not "scanning your computer"? Calling the title misleading because they didn't breach the browser sandbox is wrong when this is clearly a scenario most people didn't think was possible. Chrome added extensionId randomization with the change to V3, so it's clearly not an intended scenario. > vs. something inherently sinister (e.g. “they’re checking to see if you’re…

There are rules and laws about fingerprinting too, I thought.

Lol, lmao even. Lawmakers are banning privacy as fast as they can, this kind of personally identifiable stuff is perfectly aligned with their end goals.

Checking for extensions is barely anything when you consider the amount of system data a browser exposes in various APIs, and you can identify someone just by checking what's supported by their hardware, their screen res, what quirks the rendering pipeline has, etc. It's borderline trivial and impossible to avoid if you want a working browser, and if you don't the likes of Anubis will block you from every site cause they'll think you're a VM running scraper bot.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#402

Post by FloorEgg »

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…

I wonder if their motivation for doing this is to detect the LinkedIn automation tools that power all the spam messaging and connection requests?

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#403

Post by rchaud »

b112 wrote: post #263
surajrmal wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry, soon you'll need to pay every website 5.99 a month because AI is destroying click through rates. The internet will likely be far worse without ads than with ads. Solving the tracking problem doesn't need to be mixed up with blocking ads outright. What's funny is that tracking isn't nearly as meaningful for click through rates on ads as relevance to what's on the page, and yet so much effort is placed ont…

internet will likely be far worse without ads than with ads Not sure on that. It was far, far better before what drives ads today. I've gotten more value from random people's static HTML pages in 1999, than I ever have from something in the last 25 years. This just led me to think of news sites, and how they've turned mostly into click-bait farms in the last decade to 15. Gives me pause. Didn't the king of "doing it…

> If there is any way to make cash from news, shouldn't Bezos have been able to do it??

News only made money when the newspapers could leverage their circulation numbers to run their own ads network. The classifieds section was a money machine. I remember full-page ads in the Washington Post from local car dealerships showing every model they were selling. They likely ran different ads for distribution in other regions, probably 10Xing their money. Google and Facebook killed that.

What Bezos bought was a corpse of a business, but one with strong journalistic credibility known for historic investigative analyses such as the Watergate cover-up that earned public goodwill. He was buying that goodwill and slowly asphyxiating it to align with his own interests.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#404

Post by OkayPhysicist »

kartoffelsaft wrote: post #385

I want to know what power I have as just some guy to do anything about this? (even if just for myself) I ask because it seems like every job I apply to asks for a linkedin profile, and I've heard floating around that if it's not filled in enough most employers assume you're a bot. Heck, one of the forms from the "who's hiring" thread yesterday straight up said if you have < 100 connections they'd throw out your appli…

For you personally, to solve this issue in particular? Use Firefox. Google is evil, and there's a good chunk of the Chrome team who are actively enemy combatants.

For the broader issue of not wanting to give even the information you'd need to choose to share to LinkedIn? Network the good ol' fashioned way: talking to random strangers in San Francisco bars.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#405

Post by mistrial9 »

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…

you are not alone, people seriously proposed one thing after another in the early 2000s.. same time frame as RSS, roughly. Somehow, these proposals were undermined and slow-walked? merger and acquisition in Silicon Valley was aligned with very different things

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#406

Post by dobs_bob »

lemoncookiechip wrote: post #262
nickvec wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Majority of people use their mobile devices these days to browse the Internet. Installing an ad blocker on your iPhone is a significantly bigger challenge than on desktop.

Use Firefox/Fennec which allow you to install a variety of the add-ons you can install on the desktop version such as UBO, Stylus, ViolentMonkey, Bitwarden, SponsorBlock, etc... or install Brave which comes with adblock by default. As for iPhone, you can install Brave which has adblock, I don't think Firefox has add-ons in that version though, not sure.

Isn't Brave backed by Peter Thiel? That alone would make me not trust it but they also have baked in crypto and other weird stuff.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#407

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

justonceokay wrote: post #383
compiler-guy wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something may be bad, but accurately describing why it is bad significantly elevates the discourse. Eg, someone could use the phrase "Won't someone think of the children?" to describe a legitimately bad thing like bank fraud, but the solutions that flow from the problem that "children are in danger" are significantly different from the solutions that flow from "phishing attacks are rampant". The two issues in this ca…

So technically correct. Got it

attacking people for having more nuance and accuracy than you have is how polarization and tribal epistemology happens

'ignore the facts! ENEMY!!!' generally doesn't end well for anybody

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#408

Post by mr-wendel »

haswell wrote: post #335
catlifeonmars wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m certainly not endorsing it, do think it’s pretty problematic, and I’m glad it’s getting some visibility. But I do take some issue with the alarmist framing of what’s going on. Speaking has someone who shares the same lack of surprise, perhaps some alarm is warranted. Just because it’s ubiquitous doesn’t mean it’s ok. This feels very much frog in boiling water for me. Why do you think the alarmist framing is unw…

I do think a degree of alarm is appropriate. But it’s critical to sound the correct alarm. To me, it seems like the authors pulled the fire alarm for a single building when in reality there’s a tornado bearing down. And by doing so, everyone is scrambling about a fire instead of the response a tornado siren would cause. They’re both dangerous and worthy of an immediate reaction, but the confusion and misdirection thi…

I think this is a great analogy. I read quite a bit of the site and it's wildly blown out of proportion and severely lacking in context.

How many phone apps do you think are trying to detect what else is installed on your phone? I was part of an acquisition of a company with a very large mobile user base and our new parent was shocked we weren't trying to passively collect device information like this. They for sure were.

And on the flip side, as others have done well to point out, there are a LOT of legitimate reasons to fingerprint users for anti-fraud/abuse and I am 100% convinced that we're all better off for this.

Maybe thats all this story is about, maybe not, but this article leaves out an incredible amount of complexity.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#410

Post by reaperducer »

Aurornis wrote: post #176
honzaik wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it apparently scans for something like "PQC Checker", an extension for checking if TLS connection is PQC-enabled? how is that a spam extension (and thats just a random one i saw)

Probably compromised extensions or misleading extensions. It’s common for malware extensions to disguise themselves as something simple and useful to try to trick a large audience into installing them. That’s why the list includes things like an “Islamic content filter” and “anti-Zionist tagger” as well as “neurodivergent” tools. They look for trending topics and repackage the scraper with a new name. Most people onl…

Probably compromised extensions or misleading extensions.

You'll have to do better than "Probably."

What is it about the tech bubble that compels people to proactively apologize for and excuse the bad behavior of trillion-dollar companies?

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