LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions • Hacker News Board

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#541

Post by alt227 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 5:39 PM UTC

caminante wrote: post #505

alt227 wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cant believe that people still have the attitude that the trillions of dollars being invested in all this technology and tracking is just to give them a more relevant ad . Do people really not remember scandals like Cambridge Analytica, and realise that these ads combined with social media feeds can be used to literally control and manipulate peoples decisions and behavoir? Theres a reason Facebook and Youtube just…

You're glossing over the nuance of the Cambridge Analytica scandal or at least I don't see how it's connected here. Facebook was a party, but not the protagonist. - a Cambridge researcher (Aleks Kogan) created a personality quiz FB app advertised as academic research - users had to consent to download the app - the app nefariously scraped users' friends' data (300k users unlocked 87 million users' data) - the informa…

The parent post said:

> if they do a better job at showing me an ad that might be relevant to me, how is that disgusting?

To me that signalled that the author of the comment doesnt really care what is gonig on behind the scenes if the result is a better and more relevant ad.

I see this attitude often from people who dont seem to understand the severity and seriousness of online tracking which leads to psychological profiling which leads to manipulation.

> who then used the information to profile American voters

You seem to have missed off the most serious bit at the end. Cambridge Analytica then used the data to profile millions of voters, and purposefully target divisive and flammable political material to specific suggestible people in order to manipulate outcomes.

This same thing is done all the time by all tracking and ad companies. I think this thread has gone beyond just LinkdIn scanning your browser extensions.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#542

Post by bookofjoe » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 5:40 PM UTC

integralid wrote: post #420

lastofthemojito wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is why I run ad blockers. It's pretty wild that we live in a world where the actual FBI has recommended we use ad blockers to protect ourselves, and if everyone actually listened, much of the Internet (and economy) as we know it would disappear. The FBI is like "you should protect yourself from the way that the third largest company in the world does business", and the average person's response is "nah, that w…

>the average person's response is "nah, that would take at least a couple of minutes of my time, As a data point I, a technical person who tweaks his computer a lot, was against adblocking for moral reasons (as a part of perceived social contract, where internet is free because of ads). Only later I changed mi mind on this because I became more privacy aware.

The average person — that would be me — thinks "nah, I have no idea how to install an ad blocker or how one works, and I'm afraid I'll screw up my computer."

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#543

Post by Fwirt » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 5:40 PM UTC

nickvec wrote: post #222

lastofthemojito wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is why I run ad blockers. It's pretty wild that we live in a world where the actual FBI has recommended we use ad blockers to protect ourselves, and if everyone actually listened, much of the Internet (and economy) as we know it would disappear. The FBI is like "you should protect yourself from the way that the third largest company in the world does business", and the average person's response is "nah, that w…

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.

AdGuard installs through the App Store and integrates seamlessly with Safari. It's not as perfect as some of the desktop class adblockers, but it's free and can be up and running in a couple minutes.

If you're on Android, Firefox supports many full desktop extensions, including uBlock Origin.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#544

Post by autoexec » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

iso1631 wrote: post #358

dmoose wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google cares deeply about privacy. Google defines privacy as them not giving your private data that they have collected to anyone who hasn't paid them for it or can compel them to give it up.

Why would the police go to all that hassle of compelling google to give it up when it can simply buy it on the open market.

Police do hit up google for data though. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike...

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#545

Post by haswell » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

tomwheeler wrote: post #528

hsuduebc2 wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it would be more appropriate headline if it would be about broken browser behavior. But this is about major corporation sneakily abusing this to ilegally extract specific sensitive data which they are abusing.

It's possible to write a headline that directs blames at both parties: "Major Browsers Fail to Block Websites that Invade Your Privacy" The fact that the website is doing this is a bigger problem than the browser not preventing it. If someone breaks into a house, it's the burglar who is prosecuted, not the company that made the door. If you scanned LinkedIn's private network, you'd be criminally charged. Why are they…

> If you scanned LinkedIn's private network, you'd be criminally charged. Why are they allowed to scan yours with impunity? And why is this being normalized?

First, I think it’s a major issue that Chrome is allowing websites to check for installed extensions.

With that said, scanning LinkedIn’s private network is not analogous to what is going on here. As problematic as it is, they’re getting information isolated to the browser itself and are not crossing the boundary to the rest of the OS much less the rest of the internal network.

Problematic for privacy? Yes. Should be locked down? Yes. But also surprisingly similar to other APIs that provide information like screen resolution, installed fonts, etc. Calling those APIs is not illegal. I’m curious to know what the technical legal ramifications are of calling these extension APIs.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#546

Post by Fwirt » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 5:41 PM UTC

nickvec wrote: post #242

streetfighter64 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not anymore. You can just find one on the app store and install it, almost exactly the same as you do in a browser's extension "store". It won't be as good as uBlock but it certainly works fine even in Safari.

Which do you use? I was unaware that Apple even let such apps on the App Store. I always assumed that their ToS would strictly prohibit it.

AdGuard has never given me any trouble.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#547

Post by autoexec » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

haswell wrote: post #50

replwoacause wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, I think we should push back hard on behavior like this. What business is it of LinkedIn's what browser extensions I have installed? I think the framing for this is appropriate.

To broaden my point, I think we’d find that many websites we use are doing this. My point isn’t that this is acceptable or that we shouldn’t push back against it. We should. My point is that this doesn’t sound particularly surprising or unique to LinkedIn, and that the framing of the article seems a bit misleading as a result.

I've love it if LinkedIn got successfully sued for millions and it resulted in similar lawsuits against every other website that did this sort of thing.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#548

Post by bookofjoe » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

brokencode wrote: post #466

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the internet you pay to access and which was around before the ads were even on it? That internet? I'm not trying to be mean I'm just trying to historically parse your sentence/belief. Because for me this is a simplified analogy of what happened on the internet: a) we opened a club house called the internet in the early 1990s, just after the time of BBSs b) a few years later a new guy called commercial busin…

I mean yeah, you pay for the internet. But many sites are free to use only due to ads. Such as news and magazine sites, many of which are actively dying due to a lack of revenue. I personally wish these sites could all switch to paid models, because I also don’t like ads. But absent that, I’d like to support the sites I use so that they don’t go out of business.

I have expensive online subscriptions to New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Nevertheless they are FILLED with ads/popups/videos that run automatically/dark patterns. Just saying: there's no refuge.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#549

Post by mech422 » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 5:44 PM UTC

chasd00 wrote: post #469

ACow_Adonis wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the internet you pay to access and which was around before the ads were even on it? That internet? I'm not trying to be mean I'm just trying to historically parse your sentence/belief. Because for me this is a simplified analogy of what happened on the internet: a) we opened a club house called the internet in the early 1990s, just after the time of BBSs b) a few years later a new guy called commercial busin…

> a) we opened a club house called the internet in the early 1990s, just after the time of BBSs "we" is doing a lot of work here. No clubhouse got optical switching working and all that fiber in the ground for example. Beyond POC, the Internet was all commercial interests.

"we" paid ISP's ... which in turn, paid for infrastructure. Some of "we" pay cable providers for internet service, which in turn paid for (in my case) fiber-to-the-curb. Advertising basically supported social media, search engines, etc.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#550

Post by jditu » Thu, Apr 02, 2026, 5:44 PM UTC

Gagarin1917 wrote: post #427

phplovesong wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YT made sure adblockers ruin the experience. We really need a good YT alternative, as it has become AI slop (shorts) and most new videos are of real poor quality.

You’re not going to get a YT alternative if it can’t make money with ads.

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