Same thing happens on Google Play Store. They ask us to comply the privacy policy without giving us any guideeline :(
Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension
511–520 of 811 posts
Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension
#512Earlier quoted context omitted.
The rule still applies: if you build your business on someone else's property, don't act surprised when they they casually destroy you. It has happened again and again and again. Building for FB or Google is you making yourself their serf, and you will be allowed to exist at their whim.
How can you realistically avoid this for certain products though? For mobile for example, you've got the iOS and Android store policies to go through, the iOS and Android SDKs, and whatever restrictions Safari (e.g. no proper PWAs) and Chrome have. Not everything can be a website that just needs basic browser capabilities.
> How can you realistically avoid this for certain products though?
You can't. It seems like if you're in business of mobile/web-apps which are not large enough to have paid, direct contacts with your relevant platforms, you should have more than one business.
I'm not saying it's a reasonable expectation or a good thing. But if you can pull off either 2 ok apps, or 1 main app and some set of simple things, it may be preferable to one perfect product from the business continuity perspective.
Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension
#513Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the thing I'm sympathetic to - having fixed the bug , it's frustrating that it's not clear what the next steps are. But given that they had the bug, Chrome was absolutely in the right to deny them the first time. And while I don't like Chrome's position that they're too busy to explain to everyone what they're doing wrong, if extensions that go "oh hey, we don't actually need access to literally every website,…
The tool could tell them what the problem is. There are fine grained permissions, and Google could say which of those fine grained permissions are used badly. OR, they could just restrict those permissions themselves in the browser.
If it did, it'd be easy for malware authors to work around the scanner. The system we've got right now isn't great, but I've yet to see any better ideas.
Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension
#514Uh, yikes: > As I looked at the permissions and what our extension actually needs to operate, I noticed a great opportunity to reduce our permissions requests. We do not need to request access to data on https://*/* and http://*/* . Instead, we can simply request data access for https://*.pushbullet.com/* , http://*.pushbullet.com/* , and http://localhost/* . This is a huge reduction in the private data our extension…
The outcome seems to be that this extension fixed the bug and will still be kicked off the Chrome Web Store. That's probably not a net benefit for users _as a result_, even setting aside the unclear communication.
Imagine using a build system that doesn't give any error messages, except to say at the end "build failed, there was a syntax error". This sucks as a tool. Everyone would avoid it if they could, even if it found real bugs.
We shouldn't accept this level of information from services either.
Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension
#515Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have a link for that claim on LastPass? I use the extension and am wondering if I shouldn't use an PM extension thats more reliable in terms of security. Any recommendations obviously welcome.
See my podcast's episode on this :) https://looseleafsecurity.com/episodes/password-manager-secu... (there's a full transcript in there if audio isn't your thing) The LastPass issues are all pretty old at this point - I mostly mention it to drive in the point that getting this stuff right is hard. (For what it's worth, the researcher who found those issues has good things to say about LastPass: https://twitter.com/ta…
Any opinion on Bitwarden?
Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension
#516Earlier quoted context omitted.
The rule still applies: if you build your business on someone else's property, don't act surprised when they they casually destroy you. It has happened again and again and again. Building for FB or Google is you making yourself their serf, and you will be allowed to exist at their whim.
This isn't very actionable advice, though, since there is basically no such thing as a software product that isn't built on somebody else's property. You might think, "Ah-ha, web apps!" But no, Google can still casually destroy you there. Or you might think, "Ah-ha, desktop apps!" But the OS vendor can casually destroy you there.
People have been complaining about $dominant_player's power to destroy forever. It was IBM, then it was Microsoft, now we have new overlords. (For that matter, Sun was big enough to be a little obnoxious for a bit.)
That's unfortunate, but it is how the software market has worked thus far. Platform owners have massive power over those who build on them. For it to change, the market fundamentals will have to change. People thought the internet would change things, and it did - instead of one monster, we now have several, each with much more reach and control.
As far as actionable advice, well, starting a company isn't easy or formulaic. All I can recommend is look for niches where you'll be hard to dislodge and avoid situations where you have asymmetrical dependence on an entity that has no reason to care about you.
Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension
#517I'm in the same boat. My open source chrome extension[1] has just been taken down[2] after several years of no complaints because it apparently violated content policies related to nudity and pornography. Say what? Well, I guess you could view _any_ image using my extension, including nudes. Isn't that the problem with most other extensions which could be used on porn sites, like editing cookies, etc? I've submitted…
Oh no! You can view nude images and porn videos on Chrome. Should scrape the whole project. /s
Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension
#518Earlier quoted context omitted.
But you're completely ignoring the point that even without the all http(s) permission they will still be kicked off the store, so that has nothing do do with the issue at hand. If localhost is the issue, Google could literally respond exactly the way you did and the problem is gone, "why do you need http://localhost/?" This isn't about permissions at all. This is about communication and whether it's worth putting eff…
That's the thing I'm sympathetic to - having fixed the bug , it's frustrating that it's not clear what the next steps are. But given that they had the bug, Chrome was absolutely in the right to deny them the first time. And while I don't like Chrome's position that they're too busy to explain to everyone what they're doing wrong, if extensions that go "oh hey, we don't actually need access to literally every website,…
I can only assume that this isn't the result of a human flagging Pushbullet like this; I expect it's an automated system. And if that automated system can make a decision to flag the extension, it could also include in the email specifically what caused that flagging to happen.
At this point I'm really starting to become unsympathetic to the idea that they can't tell you what you're doing wrong because it'll enable people to figure out ways to work around the flagging algorithm. I kinda just don't care anymore. If you're going to run a platform like this and capriciously threaten to kick people off of it, it's pretty antisocial to hide the reasons why.
(And yes, I know, Google has no obligation to do anything differently here. But I can perfectly well think they suck for their current practices.)
Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension
#519Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can probably get around this by setting up some DNS like localhost.pushbullet.com -> 127.0.0.1. It's probably not in the spirit of what they're asking for though, if it is indeed the problem.
If you have a half-decent router or firewall, this won’t work from outside the network.
Huh? What kind of router would filter out 127.x responses by default? Also, this wouldn't work with DoH enabled which is where we're heading with browsers.
Re: Let's guess what Google requires in 14 days or they kill our extension
#520Uh, yikes: > As I looked at the permissions and what our extension actually needs to operate, I noticed a great opportunity to reduce our permissions requests. We do not need to request access to data on https://*/* and http://*/* . Instead, we can simply request data access for https://*.pushbullet.com/* , http://*.pushbullet.com/* , and http://localhost/* . This is a huge reduction in the private data our extension…
>Uh, yikes Agreed I wish we could send everyone that thinks this kind of response from a megacorporation is good to a kafkaesque alternate universe.
> kafkaesque alternate universe
You can sleep well tonight knowing a few of them will attempt to build a house in California.