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LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

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Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#721

Post by cxr »

Aurornis wrote: post #176
honzaik wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it apparently scans for something like "PQC Checker", an extension for checking if TLS connection is PQC-enabled? how is that a spam extension (and thats just a random one i saw)

Probably compromised extensions or misleading extensions. It’s common for malware extensions to disguise themselves as something simple and useful to try to trick a large audience into installing them. That’s why the list includes things like an “Islamic content filter” and “anti-Zionist tagger” as well as “neurodivergent” tools. They look for trending topics and repackage the scraper with a new name. Most people onl…

To think that there's any one class of behavior motivating them is missing the point. This was all pretty well-documented a couple of months ago. (Previously: https://github.com/mdp/linkedin-extension-fingerprinting> 244 comments. 2026 February 5. 534 points. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46904361>)

They're doing a lot more than scanning for "compromised or misleading extensions"; there are a lot of scummy/spammy extensions on the list, but among the extensions included in the list of those they probe are also extensions such as:

- "LinkedNotes" (basically the Personal Note feature from Mastodon, but on LinkedIn profiles) https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/neefoldancbjljnnnpn...>

- "Highlight multiple keywords in a web page", an extension that re-implements the equivalent Firefox's "Highlight All" findbar button in Chrome—and happens to mention LinkedIn in the description when describing one use case https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ngkkfkfmnclhjlaofbh...>

- "Delayed gratification Research", a study/focus extension created "for OS semester at CODE University of Applied Sciences" to "Temporarily Block distracting websites"—with all of 4 active users https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/mmibdgeegkhehbbadeb...>

It's pretty clear that LinkedIn, like many website operators, don't think of themselves as a source of information that it will send to your UA upon request. It's not even just that they want total visibility into your habits like the worst of the advertising/tracking companies. What they want is as control as they can manage to wrangle over the experience of what it's like when you're "on" their site (i.e. looking at something on your computer that came from their site)—not least of all so they can upsell their userbase on premium features. LinkedIn doesn't care so much that people are inundating other users/orgs that might not appreciate that they're being treated as a "lead", so much as LinkedIn cares that the people doing the inundating are doing it with tools where LinkedIn wasn't able to get a cut.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#722

Post by tombert »

ef2k wrote: post #551

A few years ago, intentionally fingerprinting or tracking your users without disclosure was spyware and unethical. Alas, here we are. Anyway, what they're calling "spectroscopy", is a combination of extension probing and doing residue detection (looking for what extensions might leave behind in the DOM). An ad blocker is not necessarily equipped to help since the script is embedded with the application code. Since th…

It's the typical Microsoft playbook, where they release a product and convince everyone that it has to be used everywhere, and by the time people realize how unbelievably terrible the product is it's too late and it has entrenched itself everywhere.

They've run this experiment before; Windows is terrible and has been for a very long time, Microsoft Office is terrible and has been for a very long time, Sharepoint is terrible and has been for a very long time, LinkedIn is terrible and has been for a very long time, etc.

It's what they do, there is not a single thing that Microsoft does not half-ass, because all they focus on is getting embedded into places, and that does not require that any of their products be good.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#723

Post by jasonfarnon »

leptons wrote: post #621
ronsor wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The social contract was "your ads aren't annoying or invasive, and don't waste my time, so I earn you some money" But ads are all of those things now, so I feel no obligation. I only got an ad blocker around the time ads were becoming excessively irritating.

I remember how I felt the first time I saw an ad come across my browser, it seems so long ago - I guess it was more than a quarter century ago now. I knew it was going to be downhill from there, and it has been.

Well by 2000 the guy at Tripod had already developed pop-up ads. I honestly don't remember ads before the pop-ups, but it must have already been maturing.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#724

Post by jasonfarnon »

hn_acc1 wrote: post #696
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #540

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> commenter above is talking about the enthusiast-populated internet of the late 80s/early 90s, at which point it still wasn't even clear if it was legal to use the internet for commercial purposes Source? Not doubting. But I have a friend who was buying airline tickets through CompuServe in the late 80s/early 90s.

Compuserve was NOT the internet. Compuserve / Prodigy / GEnie were early versions of Facebook. They also inter-operated (email) for some period of time. IIRC.

An important distinction, although I do remember AOL making a strong go at "branding" the internet by the late 90s.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#725

Post by brainzap »

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…

extensions create so many bug reports, I would do the same

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#726

Post by varenc »

ef2k wrote: post #551

A few years ago, intentionally fingerprinting or tracking your users without disclosure was spyware and unethical. Alas, here we are. Anyway, what they're calling "spectroscopy", is a combination of extension probing and doing residue detection (looking for what extensions might leave behind in the DOM). An ad blocker is not necessarily equipped to help since the script is embedded with the application code. Since th…

> A few years ago, intentionally fingerprinting or tracking your users without disclosure was spyware and unethical. Alas, here we are.

For over 15 years reCAPTCHA has relied on browser fingerprinting to help distinguish humans from bots. And fingerprintjs.com has been around for well more than a couple years.

That said, sniffing the browser extensions someone is using is NOT a common fingerprinting method used by my examples, but just saying fingerprinting itself without explicit disclosure has been around for quite a long time. It happens on literally every CAPTCHA service. I hate it of course, but the ship sailed a long time ago.

--

I like this demo for testing my browser's resilence against fingerprinting: https://fingerprint.com/demo/

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#728

Post by shreyssh »

ryandrake wrote: post #230
haswell wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> What the article describes sounds like what many devs would land on given the browser APIs available. > To reiterate, at no point am I saying this is good or acceptable. I think there’s a massive privacy problem in the tech industry that needs to be addressed. These two sentences highlight the underlying problem: Developers without an ethical backbone, or who are powerless to push back on unethical projects. What t…

[dead]

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#729

Post by chickensong »

bookofjoe wrote: post #701
chickensong wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 do…

I don't know why you're inserting HN into it? We're talking about average people, not nerds with ad-blockers. Are you suggesting that the average person enjoys being interrupted with ads?

> 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."

Perhaps I was a bit dramatic with my wording, but my point still stands. Since you're flatly denying it, perhaps you have some references? As far as I can tell, all signs are pointing to widespread ADHD increases correlated to computer use, which may not be directly tied to ads exclusively, it stands to reason that they're big offenders given their nature of being short, attention-grabbing, context-breaking, non-interactive engagements. There's plenty of studies that support this.

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

Um, really?

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

My point was it's death by a thousand cuts, boiling the frog, etc. The average attention span has been cut in half over the last 20 years. Also, I'd argue that sensitive people who may already be mentally stressed, which seems to be a growing group, might actually suffer in the short term or immediately.

You've made some strong statements, but I'm having a hard time buying them.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#730

Post by Paianni »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #404
kartoffelsaft wrote: post #385

I want to know what power I have as just some guy to do anything about this? (even if just for myself) I ask because it seems like every job I apply to asks for a linkedin profile, and I've heard floating around that if it's not filled in enough most employers assume you're a bot. Heck, one of the forms from the "who's hiring" thread yesterday straight up said if you have < 100 connections they'd throw out your appli…

For you personally, to solve this issue in particular? Use Firefox. Google is evil, and there's a good chunk of the Chrome team who are actively enemy combatants. For the broader issue of not wanting to give even the information you'd need to choose to share to LinkedIn? Network the good ol' fashioned way: talking to random strangers in San Francisco bars.

Mozilla is controlled opposition (largely funded by Google) and the browser can't really compete on security and performance.
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