Mastodawn

digitalWestie 4d ago

LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer

https://browsergate.eu/

LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer

Microsoft is running one of the largest corporate espionage operations in modern history. Every time any of LinkedIn’s one billion users visits linkedin.com, hidden code searches their computer for installed software, collects the results, and transmits them to LinkedIn’s servers and to third-party companies including an American-Israeli cybersecurity firm. The user is never asked. Never told. LinkedIn’s privacy policy does not mention it. Because LinkedIn knows each user’s real name, employer, and job title, it is not searching anonymous visitors. It is searching identified people at identified companies. Millions of companies. Every day. All over the world.

BrowserGate

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 to find in modern browser fingerprinting code. I’m not deeply familiar with what APIs are available for detecting extensions, but the fact that it scans for specific extensions sounds more like a product of an API limitation (i.e. no available getAllExtensions() or somesuch) vs. something inherently sinister (e.g. “they’re checking to see if you’re a Muslim”).

I’m certainly not endorsing it, do think it’s pretty problematic, and I’m glad it’s getting some visibility. But I do take some issue with the alarmist framing of what’s going on.

I’ve come to mostly expect this behavior from most websites that run advertising code and this is why I run ad blockers.

I disagree, I think we should push back hard on behavior like this. What business is it of LinkedIn's what browser extensions I have installed? I think the framing for this is appropriate.

To broaden my point, I think we’d find that many websites we use are doing this.

My point isn’t that this is acceptable or that we shouldn’t push back against it. We should.

My point is that this doesn’t sound particularly surprising or unique to LinkedIn, and that the framing of the article seems a bit misleading as a result.

> To broaden my point, I think we’d find that many websites we use are doing this.

Your point of "I think we’d find that many websites we use are doing this" doesn't make LinkedIn's behavior ok!

By your logic, if our privacy rights are invaded which is illegal in most jurisdiction, and then it become ok because many companies do illegal things??

Absolutely not. At no point am I saying this is ok.

I’m saying that the framing of the article makes this sound like LinkedIn is the Big Bad when the reality is far worse - they’re just one in a sea of entities doing this kind of thing.

If anything, the article undersells the scale of the issue.

You really need to work on your reading comprehension, dude.

Why is it possible for a web site to determine what browser extensions I have installed? If there are legitimate uses, why isn't this gated behind a permission prompt, like things like location and camera?

This, to me, seems like the more salient point. A headline like “Major browsers allow websites to see your installed extensions” seems more appropriate here.

We’ve known for a long time that advertisers/“security” vendors use as many detectable characteristics as possible to constrict unique fingerprints. This seems like a major enabler of even more invasive fingerprinting and that seems like the bigger issue here.

This is a Chrome thing. It’s a safe bet that if you use Google products you don’t care about privacy anyway. “Google product collects info about you: news at 11.”

Google cares deeply about privacy. Google defines privacy as them not giving your private data that they have collected to anyone else unless you ask them to.

Google cares deeply about privacy. Google defines privacy as them not giving your private data that they have collected to anyone who hasn't paid them for it or can compel them to give it up.

seanw444 4d ago

There's a fourth amendment case on the Supreme Court docket (Chatrie v. U.S.) about Google searching a massive amount of user data to find people in a location at a specific time, at police request. The case is about whether the police's warrant warranted such a wide scope of search (if general warrants are allowed).

Point being: Google will 100% give your info to the police, regardless of whether the police have the legal right to it or not, and regardless of whether you actually committed a crime or not.

Bonus points: the federal court that ruled on the case said that it likely violated the fourth amendment, but they allowed the police to admit the evidence anyway because of the "good faith" clause, which is a new one for me. Time to add it to the list of horribly abusable exceptions (qualified immunity, civil asset forfeiture, and eminent domain coming to mind).

ImPostingOnHN 4d ago

They knowingly participated in PRISM, too.

Why would the police go to all that hassle of compelling google to give it up when it can simply buy it on the open market.

The breaking point with me that caused me to de-google myself was finding out that Google was buying Mastercard records in order to cross-reference them with Android phone data. That shit is not okay.

Ah yes, I should have said I was describing the official line, not the behaviour. In all fairness the “can compel them to give it up” doesn’t seem to be optional but otherwise, yeah. Agreed.

> This is a Chrome thing.

This is blatant misinformation. Firefox (and all of its derivatives) also does this.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1372288

1372288 - [meta] WebExtensions can be used as user fingerprint

NEW (nobody) in WebExtensions - General. Last updated 2026-03-24.

hsuduebc2 4d ago

Well it would be more appropriate headline if it would be about broken browser behavior.

But this is about major corporation sneakily abusing this to ilegally extract specific sensitive data which they are abusing.

roblabla 4d ago

It does two things:

1. Do a request to `chrome-extension://<extension_id>/<file>`. It's unclear to me why this is allowed.

2. Scan the DOM, look for nodes containing "chrome-extension://" within them (for instance because they link to an internal resource)

It's pretty obvious why the second one works, and that "feels alright" - if an extension modifies the DOM, then it's going to leave traces behind that the page might be able to pick up on.

The first one is super problematic to me though, as it means that even extensions that don't interact with the page at all can be detected. It's unclear to me whether an extension can protect itself against it.

> 1. Do a request to `chrome-extension://<extension_id>/<file>`. It's unclear to me why this is allowed.

Big +1 to that.

The charitable interpretation is that this behavior is simply an oversight by Google, a pretty massive one at that, which they have been slow to correct.

The less-charitable interpretation is that it has served Google's interests to maintain this (mis)feature of its browser. Likely, Google or its partners use similar to techniques to what LinkedIn/Microsoft use.

This would be in the same vein as Google Chrome replacing ManifestV2 with ManifestV3, ostensibly for performance- and security-related purposes, when it just so happens that ManifestV3 limits the ability to block ads in Chrome… the major source of revenue for Google.

The more-fully-open-source Mozilla Firefox browser seems to have had no difficulty in recognizing the issues with static extension IDs and randomizing them since forever (https://harshityadav.in/posts/Linkedins-Fingerprinting), just as Firefox continues to support ManifestV2 and more effective ad-blocking, with no issues.

LinkedIn’s Fingerprinting

LinkedIn’s Fingerprinting

Harshit Yadav

warkdarrior 4d ago

> This would be in the same vein as Google Chrome replacing ManifestV2 with ManifestV3, ostensibly for performance- and security-related purposes, when it just so happens that ManifestV3 limits the ability to block ads in Chrome… the major source of revenue for Google.

uBlock Origin Lite (compatible w/ ManifestV3) works quite well for me, I do not see any ads wherever I browse.

Agreed, but also, permission prompts are way overused and often meaningless to anyone at all, even fellow software engineers. “This program [program.exe] wants to do stuff, yes/no?” How should I know what’s safe to say yes to?

I think Android’s ‘permissions’ early on (maybe it’s improved?) and Microsoft’s blanket ‘this program wants to do things’ authorisation pop up have set a standard here that we shouldn’t still be following.

mrweasel 4d ago

Generally the whole thing needs to be flipped upside down. Extensions is the easy one, there's not reason a random website can list your installed extensions, zero.

For other capabilities, like BlueTooth API, rather than querying the browser, assume that the browser can do it and then have the browser inform the user that the site is attempting to use an unsupported API.

Aurornis 4d ago

> What business is it of LinkedIn's what browser extensions I have installed?

The list of extensions they scan for has been extracted from the code. It was all extensions related to spamming and scraping LinkedIn last time this was posted: Extensions to scrape your LinkedIn session and extract contact info for lead lists, extensions to generate AI message spam.

That seems like fair game for their business.

tartoran 4d ago

And instead LinkedIn is scraping all users computers?

Aurornis 4d ago

This doesn’t fit the description of scraping by any normal definition. It’s a classic feature probe structure, where the features happen to be scraping extensions.

I think it’s kind of funny that HN has gone so reactionary at tech companies that the comments here have become twisted against the anti-spam measures instituted on a website that will never trigger on any of their PCs, because HN users aren’t installing LinkedIn scrape and spam extensions.

ImPostingOnHN 4d ago

HackerNews users used to be the type that would do the scraping, so they could Hack the data into whatever format or integration they desired.

It's unfortunate to see folks here who don't support that – interoperability is at the heart of the Hacker Ethic. LinkedIn (along with any other big tech companies locking down and crippling their APIs) is wrong to even try to block it.

Is it an issue of the resources scrapers consume? No: Even ordinary users trying to get API access on a registered persistent account linked to their name are stymied in accessing their own data. LinkedIn simply doesn't want you to access your own data via API, or in any manner that isn't blessed by them. That ain't right.

warkdarrior 4d ago

LinkedIn has an API you can use at your convenience:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/linkedin/

Accessing other users' LinkedIn data via the API requires their OAuth consent, as it should be. But you are welcome to access your own data via the API.

LinkedIn API Documentation - LinkedIn

Explore LinkedIn API documentation for Compliance, Consumer, Learning, Marketing, Sales, and Talent Solutions

jacquesm 4d ago

> I think we should push back hard on behavior like this.

Indeed, so I gather all of you have canceled your LI account over this?

I never made one in the first place because it was pretty clear to me that this company - even before the acquisition - had nothing good in mind.

MikeNotThePope 4d ago

If I had to guess, LinkedIn would be primarily searching for extensions that violate their terms of service (e.g. something that could be used to scrape data). They put a lot of effort into circumventing automated data collection. I could be wrong.