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LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions
771–780 of 836 posts
Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions
#772Earlier quoted context omitted.
Imagine if someone was following you around with a clipboard writing down everything you do, then rifling through your bookshelf to make note of certain books on the bookshelf, and then using that to target ads at you. You'd say that's a ridiculous and illegal thing to do without you explicit consent, right? Maybe you personally don't mind and would be happy to offer that consent. But they're doing it without your co…
by that analogy this is not following me around in my house, it’s when I go into their house that they log it?
They share the data, so they have 24h coverage and peek inside from your windows when you're home.
Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions
#773Earlier 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.
“A pensar male degli altri si fa peccato ma spesso ci si indovina.” — Giulio Andreotti
(it's a sin to assume bad intent, but you often get it right)
He was a very controversial italian politician.
Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions
#7746 months ago I already posted about this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45349476
If you hadn’t written that post using AI, it might’ve received more attention. Also, (1) if you’d put LinkedIn in the title, rather than the very bottom of the post, and (2) if you’d provided any insight, rather than just speculation, as to what the data might be being used for.
I have written something about Linkedin although not, about browser fingerprinting but certainly somewhat of an extremely bad experience with Linkedin.
Not sure if this counts but my post was actually sandwiched between two large Linkedin posts (the 2 tabs = 8 gb and now this) within the timing [0]
I always write things myself, even if they might take hours.
But I also believe that my post had overlapped with larger things of AI (OpenAI getting funded, Claude being leaked), I have seen some cool projects lately on Hackernews which aren't getting attention as all of that attention gets redirected to AI related news.
[0]: to be honest, I write things for myself firstly and I just upload them here for discussion related purposes, I am perfectly fine with my posts not reaching traction, because, I try to/wish to write for myself first and foremost :), Also within that Linkedin incident, In that case I just wrote things to get it off my chest really.
Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions
#775The 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…
And you should be trusted because… You state a lot, but not once you give even the slightest proof to your claims. Call me doubtful at best.
If you expect a reply from the damage control team, you'll be disappointed.
Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions
#776[dead]
Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions
#777You 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.
So if the same exact action is done paying a fee to linkedin it is then ok?
Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions
#778Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions
#779They really don't want people scraping their data with extensions. The LI API response is the worst tangled mess I've ever seen... It's so bad, I have to assume it's intentional. Took me 3 days to parse their responses. I had to build a special rules-based scraping engine which allows me to filter and map items layer by layer based the relative positions of those items with flexible rules. A bit like CSS selectors but more complicated.
The hard part is that some APIs return items in a different order or with different indentation so my engine normalizes all the variants into consistent objects.
It's quite impressive that LI works at all given the complexity.
Re: LinkedIn is searching your browser extensions
#780The 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…
I'm confused, you call this "misleading" then quote the claim, but say it's "what [you'd] expect to find in modern browser fingerprinting code".
So what is it? Misleading, or exactly what you expected to find? It cannot be both.
It sounds more like you object to the negative framing of Microsoft hoovering up as much data as possible for profit, even though this is objectively a crime in the jurisdictions they are being sued in.