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LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

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Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#701

Post by bookofjoe »

chickensong wrote: post #616
stronglikedan wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the average person's response is ... I'll just go ahead and continue to suffer with invasive ads The real reason is that the average person neither suffers with ads nor finds ads invasive, despite what a vocal online minority would have you believe. We just ignore them and get on with life. ::shrug::

Ignoring (post-impact) and moving on is the natural thing to do, but it seems like a stretch to imply that the average person neither suffers or finds ads invasive. The suffering isn't acute, it's death by a thousand cuts as your mind erodes into a twitchy mess. Look at the comment section of a nice youtube video and see people outraged at getting blasted with an ad at the wrong moment. Most people don't like ads, bu…

>... it seems like a stretch to imply that the average person neither suffers or finds ads invasive.

The average person has never heard of HN. It isn't the case that the average person's experience with today's internet ads is that of having their "... mind erode[s] into a twitchy mess."

The average person doesn't look at the comment section of a nice YouTube video.

>Most [HN] people don't like ads....

Most people don't suffer — at least not consciously — as a result of ads.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#702

Post by downrightmike »

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…

Android had a similar feature, but google removed it because it was invasive and being misused to target people.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#703

Post by downrightmike »

crazygringo wrote: post #631
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…

What's the path for that to even happen? Are companies now commonly uploading lists of employees to LinkedIn? Is this happening automatically because you got an e-mail account from the company and the company runs on MS Office and you're identified as am employee within it? What triggered it? This seems like somewhat of a scandal that deserves its own post, but it also needs a lot more details to be trustworthy and f…

We used to have to destroy org charts and handbooks so that our companies wouldn't get hacked, not they just throw that out the windows and act shocked when something happens.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#704

Post by robocat »

lxgr wrote: post #248

All I'm seeing is that Chrome apparently is failing to properly sandbox websites against extension fingerprinting. Sure, this can be solved at the legal layer, but in this case, there seems to be a much simpler and more effective technical solution, so why not pursue that instead?

Sister comment indicates it isn't as simple as you might think:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47617972

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#705

Post by itishappy »

LinkedinHelp wrote: post #677

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 st…

> 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.

What a nightmare! Are your findings and this list of malicious extensions published somewhere?

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#706

Post by MathiasPius »

LinkedinHelp wrote: post #677

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 st…

All illegal or unethical means can be explained, but not justified, by their ends.

I'm quite sure having unfettered insight into the browser environments of your users makes enforcing your Terms of Service much easier, but held against the (even minute) risk of exposing one of users' political, religious or sexual preferences, any of which might carry with it massive risk of bodily injury or death in many parts of the globe? I'm sorry but ToS enforcement does not even begin to clear that bar.

If you don't want your users to scrape large parts your website, have you considered just blocking users with outsized traffic usage and not violating their privacy in the process?

Justifying this invasion of privacy as a means of defending LinkedIn against the apparently existential threat posed by something as pedestrian as scraping is especially ridiculous when considering how LinkedIn managed to even get off the ground in the first place: By invading the privacy of its unwitting users by scraping their contacts and impersonating them via email[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn#Use_of_e-mail_account...

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#708

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

bookofjoe wrote: post #681
al_borland wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’ve come to mostly expect this behavior from most websites that run advertising code and this is why I run ad blockers. Expecting and accepting this kind of thing is why everyone feels the need to run an ad-blocker. An ad-blocker also isn’t full protection. It’s a cat and mouse game. Novel ideas on how to extract information about you, and influence behavior, will never be handled by ad-blockers until it becomes k…

>... everyone feels the need to run an ad-blocker. I don't: never have and never will. I don't notice the ads, they don't bother or distract me: I'm online 4-8 hours/day. diaphimisticophobia: fear of advertisements or commercials I would bet HN has the highest proportion of people with diaphimisticophobia of any group on the planet.

I dont fear advertisements. I resent them.

Studies show most people who don’t think they’re impacted by advertisements are wrong. Advertisements don’t just drive you to buy something, they can also be used to create brand recognition, positive feeling associations and force the brand to front of mind.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#709

Post by warkdarrior »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #436
hnuser435 wrote: post #409

Wish they'd add a little more to what end-users can do about it like switch to a non chrome-based browser.

It's a call for funding. I suspect the answer they want, is click on a donation link; regardless of which browser you're using.

So this website is asking for 25€ to "[pursue] DMA enforcement against LinkedIn". No timeline, no measurable goals, jump an ask for money.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#710

Post by luxuryballs »

GrinningFool wrote: post #600
luxuryballs wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The rules say we should default to assuming good faith in comments. But it's hard when I see this comment in 2026.

what would the bad faith motive even be?
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