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LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

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Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#671

Post by mikeshi42 »

Beestie wrote: post #522

I don't have a linkedin acct. So imagine my shock when I "googled" myself and found a linkedin profile connecting my name to a company I presently have a consulting arrangement with (1099 not W2). I went ballistic and fired off an email to the consulting firm to take down the profile immediately or face legal action (a bluff). Couple days later, the company forwarded an email they received from linkedin confirming th…

I’ve seen fake accounts created by bad actors attempting to pose as others for gaining remote employment. It’s possible that is what was happening, and the takedown was from LI taking down the profile from the bad actor.

Other times they would just link to real LinkedIn profiles, but the LinkedIn profile will say that they’re not actively looking and are a victim of id fraud basically.

It’s been a huge issue spotting candidates falsifying information since remote work took off unfortunately. They payout is if they can get at least 1 or 2 paychecks before being found out, they’ve made a good profit.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#672

Post by jcgrillo »

worik wrote: post #655
jcgrillo wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't actually push back as an IC. Tech companies aren't structured that way. There's no employment protection of any kind, at least in the US. So the most you can do is protest and resign, or protest and be fired. Either way, it'll cost you your job. I've paid that price and it's steep. There's no viable "grassroots" solution to the problem, it needs to come from regulation. Managers need to serve time in prison…

> There's no viable "grassroots" solution to the problem, it needs to come from regulation. Managers need to serve time in prison, No, yes Yes, giving these people short (or long, mēh) prison sentences is the only thing that will stop this. No, the obvious grassroots response is to not use LinkedIn or Chrome. (You mean developers not consumers, I think. The developers in the trenches should obey if they need their jo…

Yes, what I meant was there's no way ICs will change any of this. Using this or that extension, or choosing not to use some service won't really change anything either. The popular appetite just isn't there. Personally I use a variety of adblockers and haven't had a linkedin or anything for many years, but I fully accept that's an extremist position and most consumers will not behave that way. The only way these companies' behavior will improve is when they are meaningfully, painfully punished for it. There's very little we as consumers or ICs can do until then. Unless of course their risk management fails and they alienate a sufficiently large number of users that it becomes "uncool" to use the product. But all we need to do is look to twitter to see just how bad it'll get before then...

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#674

Post by Shog9 »

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…

The issue here is that even if the original goal is the first thing, once you have the data you can do that second thing. From where we stand, nothing changes - same information is collected. But now, it's also used for affinity targeting or worse.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#675

Post by ggrab »

I know, I know, pretty terrible and all, but can we take a moment to appreciate we’re able to ship to every browser a script that does 6000+ fetches in parallel. Sure, doesn’t go through network stack, but still impressive how far JS has come in terms of efficiency .

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#676

Post by janalsncm »

Aurornis wrote: post #155
andersonpico wrote: post #11

this is a massive violation of trust > The scan doesn’t just look for LinkedIn-related tools. It identifies whether you use an Islamic content filter (PordaAI — “Blur Haram objects, real-time AI for Islamic values”), whether you’ve installed an anti-Zionist political tagger (Anti-Zionist Tag), or a tool designed for neurodivergent users (simplify).

Many extensions designed to scrape data from social media websites are disguised as simple extensions that do something else. If I had to guess: I sought that automatic content blurrer, neurodivergent website simplifier, or anti-Zionist tagger actually work. They’re all just piggybacking on trending topics to get users to install them and then forget about them, then they exfiltrate the data when you visit LinkedIn.

Your explanation makes sense if LinkedIn is blocking browsers with these extensions installed. Are they?

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#677

Post by LinkedinHelp »

The claims made on the website linked here are plain wrong. The person behind them is subject to an account restriction for scraping and other violations of LinkedIn’s Terms of Service.

To protect the privacy of our members, their data, and to ensure site stability, we do look for extensions that scrape data without members’ consent or otherwise violate LinkedIn’s Terms of Service.

Here’s why: some extensions have static resources (images, javascript) available to inject into our webpages. We can detect the presence of these extensions by checking if that static resource URL exists. This detection is visible inside the Chrome developer console. We use this data to determine which extensions violate our terms, to inform and improve our technical defenses, and to understand why a member account might be fetching an inordinate amount of other members' data, which at scale, impacts site stability. We do not use this data to infer sensitive information about members.

For additional context, in retaliation for this website owner’s account restriction, they attempted to obtain an injunction in Germany, alleging LinkedIn had violated various laws. The court ruled against them and found their claims against LinkedIn had no merit, and in fact, this individual’s own data practices ran afoul of the law.

Unfortunately, this is a case of an individual who lost in the court of law, but is seeking to re-litigate in the court of public opinion without regard for accuracy.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#678

Post by thephyber »

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.

Browser extensions for iOS are bundled with Apps. It’s not “a significantly bigger challenge” to install an app than a Chrome extension.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#679

Post by abustamam »

dotancohen wrote: post #343
abustamam wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be a hot take but I'd be willing to pay my ISP $10 extra that they would distribute to sites I visit, if it meant zero tracking and ads. I use an ad blocker but I genuinely want to support content creators in a way that doesn't optimize for ads or clicks. There would need to be a way for ISPs to know which websites are getting my traffic in order to know who to distribute the money to, which I'm not a fan of…

> distribute to sites I visit, if it meant zero tracking How would your ISP know to which sites to distribute the money, if there were no tracking?

Yeah that's the problem (and possibly why such a thing didn't exist).

But I kinda see it like TV. Cable providers know what channels and shows people are watching. Obviously web browsing data is more personal and intimate so it's not the same thing, but it's a good starting point for a thought experiment.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#680

Post by janalsncm »

luxuryballs wrote: post #247
gwerbin wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost certainly they are using that for audience segmentation and ad targeting. Clever and disgusting. This isn't the invention of some evil moustache-twirling executive, this was the invention of an employee or group of employees who value money more than morals. We should think of such employees as henchmen.

if they do a better job at showing me an ad that might be relevant to me, how is that disgusting? if I have to see an ad at all I at least want them to give it their best shot

Aside from the fact that no one is asking for that, there is no law that prevents that ad targeting data from being sold to the government for the purposes of…whatever they want.
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