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LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

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Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#581

Post by lastofthemojito »

SoftTalker wrote: post #515
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…

Every browser should have ad blocking technology included and enabled by default. I do not understand why Apple in particular has not pushed this with Safari, as they like to portray that they care about privacy. I get why Chrome doesn't, and that's why you should not use it. But Netscape? Edge? What is stopping them? Browsing the web without an ad blocker is a miserable experience. Users who have never tried or don'…

Google pays Apple 20+ billion dollars annually to be the default search engine in Safari. I don't know whether the absence of ad blocking is a stipulation in that deal or not, but I have to imagine that if Apple blocked ads in Safari by default, that deal would not be renewed.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#582

Post by Aloisius »

armadyl wrote: post #204
acheron wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a Chrome thing. It’s a safe bet that if you use Google products you don’t care about privacy anyway. “Google product collects info about you: news at 11.”

> This is a Chrome thing. This is blatant misinformation. Firefox (and all of its derivatives) also does this. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1372288

This only works if the web page knows the random per-install id associated with an extension.

That can only happen if the extension itself leaks it to the web page and if that happens, scanning isn't necessary since it already leaked what it is to the webpage. It also doesn't tell you what extension it is, unless again, the extension leaks it to the webpage.

The attack on Chrome is far more useful for attackers as web pages can scan using the chrome store's extension ID instead.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#583

Post by eipi10_hn »

haswell wrote: post #530
ksymph wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Alongside thousands of other extensions. If they were scanning for a dozen things and this was one of them, I’d tend to agree with you. But this sounds more like they enumerated known extension IDs for a large number of extensions because getting all installed extensions isn’t possible. To take a step back further: what you're saying here is that gathering more data makes it less sinister . The gathering not being…

> The gathering not being targeted is not an excuse for gathering the data in the first place. I’m not saying it is. My point is that they appear to be trying to accomplish something like getInstalledExcentions(), which is meaningfully different from a small and targeted list like isInstalled([“Indeed.com”, “DailyBibleVerse”, “ADHD Helper”]). One could be reasonably interpreted as targeting specific kinds of users. W…

Calling out the fingerprinting users' extensions is not hyperbolic. Defending that action is.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#584

Post by caminante »

alt227 wrote: post #541
caminante wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

I agree that it could come off as gross negligence to not care about what happens with your data.

My point is that LinkedIn already has enough information (We've willingly given them!) to manipulate outcomes and if they're doing something nefarious, then it's already too late.

Whereas Cambridge Analytica involved bad actors (not Facebook) duping customers and re-selling their data. I don't think those elements are necessarily in play here.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#585

Post by Kuraj »

haswell wrote: post #167
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…

> How is probing your browser for installed extensions not "scanning your computer"? I think most people would interpret “scanning your computer” as breaking out of the confines the browser and gathering information from the computer itself. If this was happening, the magnitude of the scandal would be hard to overstate. But this is not happening. What actually is happening is still a problem. But the hyperbole underm…

> I think most people would interpret “scanning your computer” as breaking out of the confines the browser and gathering information from the computer itself. If this was happening, the magnitude of the scandal would be hard to overstate.

But at the end of the day, the browser is likely where your most sensitive data is.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#586

Post by fl4regun »

throwawayq3423 wrote: post #457
mrguyorama wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You miss the point. We literally had all of this. We had regular, affordable, high quality printed media for every hobby and interest and industry, that you could get delivered to your home address and collect in your own archive if you want, and your local library could do the same. Those pieces of paper could not track anything about you. They tried, selling their subscriber lists, but that was the best tracking th…

You make the argument from the consumer side, it's hard to argue, but digital systems are far more profitable. So that's how we got the world we got.

Your response comes packaged with a pill that I believe many people would not swallow: If it makes more profit then we should do it.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#587

Post by Dylan16807 »

voganmother42 wrote: post #501
pqtyw wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extensions are files installed on your computer, though?

Reminds me of https://xkcd.com/1200/

But it's not getting access to real user data, just a partial list of things that are installed.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#588

Post by cenal »

There is no reason to trust any big tech company. Folks should be using containers in their browser if they care about privacy. I previously published a LinkedIn container extension for FireFox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/linkedin-cont... although as many know you can achieve the same results with Firefox containers without a specific extension like mine if you configure it manually.

I will work on an improvement to that extension so that it can block these scans if they attempt them in firefox.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#590

Post by islandfox100 »

m-schuetz wrote: post #492
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…

Scanning your computer is an entirely different thing than scanning browser extensions. By maximizing the expectation via "Illegally searching your computer", the truth suddenly appears harmless.

Where do browser extensions exist? I've got a dreadful feeling they might be on my computer.
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