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LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

browsergate.eu

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Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#761

Post by LAC-Tech »

pbiggar wrote: post #502
SiteRelEnby wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of the spiciest: * Anti-Zionist Tag (directly inferring political opinion) * PordaAI (Islamic content filter) * simplify (browsergate.eu specifically called out as a neurodivergent accessibility tool. Job search autofill that markets itself as particularly useful for people who struggle with forms) * No more Musk ("Hides digital noise related to Elon Musk") * Political Circus ("Politician -> Clown AI Filter") *…

The Anti-Zionist tag is interesting. It seems that it's actually an extension that would be used by Zionists, as it identifies anti-zionists, and the wording incorrectly claims that anti-Zionism is hate speech (whereas it is in fact Zionism that is hate-based ideology). A lot of Zionists claim -- incorrectly -- that all Jews as Zionists. But certainly the major groups of Zionists are Christian zionists and Jewish Zio…

So it seems quite likely that Linkedin is actually tracking Jews with this.

Really? Which LinkedIn executive do you think might be behind this?

Jeff Weiner? (Executive Chairman)

Ryan Roslansky? (CEO)

Tomer Cohen? (Chief Product Officer who served in an IDF intelligence unit)

Dan Shapero? (Chief Operating Officer)

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#762

Post by miohtama »

jt2190 wrote: post #389
ryandrake wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> These two sentences highlight the underlying problem: Developers without an ethical backbone, or who are powerless to push back on unethical projects. What the article describes should not be "what many devs would land on" naturally. What many devs should land on is "scanning the user's browser in order to try to fingerprint him without consent is wrong and we cannot do it." I think using LinkedIn is pretty much ag…

The difference is between the data you give out voluntarily and what is taken from you without consent

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#766

Post by anticensor »

tankenmate wrote: post #215
nottorp wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm I opened linkedin in Firefox and ublock origin showed it blocked 4 items... then switched away and back and the counter was up to 12. Is that enough blocking, I wonder?

Firefox uses randomised IDs for installed extensions, so the method highlighted won't work on Firefox. That's not to say they aren't trying other methods on Firefox.

Attack surface is narrower on Firefox. WebExtensions without DOM-visible traces cannot be detected.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#767

Post by illwrks »

You can guaranteed that this is a data protection and anti-scraping measure. I used to work with some recruiters and there are several third party recruiter tools that scrape linked in data to the third party sites database under the guise of supporting recruiters. I would rather this than having my LinkedIn data siphoned off other parts of the internet for god know what purpose.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#768

Post by wraptile »

purplehat_ wrote: post #744
varenc wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Have you (or anyone reading this) been able to "beat" fingerprint.com without Tor or turning JavaScript off outright? I've tried it various times over the last couple years, using different browsers with various privacy settings enabled and a VPN. I can get good partial results and am able to reset my fingerprint by changing my OS and browser at the same time, so it's not entirely there with regards to sniffing the h…

It's definitely possible to bypass fingerprinting (just take a look at countless web scraping services that manage to do that) but consumer browser actively reject this.

If I were to wear a tin-foil hat I'd say that fingerprinting is a spyware feature not a bug but it can also be explained by the fact that current web market relies on fingerprinting too much thus blocking adoption of anti-fingerprinting features. Firefox half-ass tried to but now all the anti-fingerprint features are hidden deep in the about:config somewhere because people rather see less captchas than have privacy.

Unfortunately, there's no way to patch fingerprint ressistance into a compiled browser and even then nobody actually wants this because then cloudflare won't let you visit any web page.

The only way to get anti-fingeprinting would be to force it on everyone so that the tools that rely on it would be forced to respect the user. Considering that 2 major browsers are owned by mega corporations and 3rd one by a leech that just exists to leech billions from the first two we'll never actually defeat web fingerprinting until something absolutely catastrophic happens forcing everyone to start paying attention.

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#769

Post by m0guz »

Subdivide8452 wrote: post #765

I think the real crime here is that browsers are able to probe which extensions you have installed.

I have uBlock installed, and it blocks these kinds of requests. However every request returns an error and they enter a constant request loop, causing the LinkedIn tab to slow down as the errors pile up after few minutes. Attached a screenshot [0] from DevTools.

[0] https://ibb.co/h1sbFXB4

Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions

#770

Post by mosquitobiten »

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…

this should lead to the browser be the one doing human or robot user check, is that possible?
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