Extension Developers Sell The Data of At Least 6.5 Million Users - And It’s All Completely Legal - LayerX
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Your Extensions Sell Your Data - And It's Perfectly Legal
  • A network of 24 media extensions that are installed on 800,000 users and collected viewing data and demographic information on major streaming platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, HBO, Apple TV, and others
  • 12 separate ad blockers with a combined install base of over 5.5 million users openly selling user data
  • Nearly 50 other extensions, with over 100,000 users in aggregate, that collected and resold users’ browsing data
    • forkDestroyer@infosec.pubEnglish
      221·
      21 hours ago

      I’m sure the extensions on other browsers are doing the same thing, to be fair.

      The chrome web store is also used across other chromium browsers like Vivaldi, right?

    • Crozekiel@lemmy.zipEnglish
      12·
      1 day ago

      And then there is my company IT department wanting to forcibly uninstall anything that isn’t chrome because “chrome is the only secure option”. They literally made our company tools that are browser based just not work with anything that isn’t chrome to curb people trying to use other browsers. :(

        • Crozekiel@lemmy.zipEnglish
          1·
          7 minutes ago

          I haven’t tried that but don’t think it would work because the system isn’t checking what browser is used and returning an error message, they have literally coded the web tools in such a way that when running in Firefox, it just doesn’t ever respond. If you try doing the same action in Opera, it literally crashes the entire browser. If you try to use Edge, the tab crashes. I’m not convinced they’ve done this on purpose, I think they just cobbled stuff together and only bothered testing on Chrome and called it good when it stopped crashing for them.

      • Bazoogle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        21 hours ago

        Tbf, the problem was extensions here. Which if they have those blocked as well this wouldn’t be a problem.

        • Crozekiel@lemmy.zipEnglish
          7·
          21 hours ago

          Lol, they don’t. We have some of the worst IT people… Most of our computers are still on Windows 10 and just haven’t been getting updates because they didn’t setup extended update support properly.