Metin Seven 🎨8h ago

LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer

https://browsergate.eu

#tech #technology #BigTech #IT #enshittification #microslop #microsoft #LinkedIn #social #media #SocialMedia #data #security #safety #InfoSec #internet #web

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
Show threadThe Hat Fox

@metin From what I’ve gathered, they are detecting installed Chrome browser extensions, not locally installed software. For a minute I thought there was some horrible new browser API that was exposing that.

Harvesting extension data still isn’t great, but it does beg the question why Chrome browsers allow that in the first place.

5:08pmWeb
Show threadSteven3h ago
@thehatfox @metin My thoughts exactly. I thought extensions got a random id when installed to prevent something like this, kinda like ASLR. Maybe that's just a Firefox thing?
Show threadNeil1h ago
@steven @thehatfox @metin it seems LI assigned an internal code/id for each extension and match that with a known file in the extension. A randomly assigned ID makes no difference.
Show threadCassandrich2h ago
@thehatfox @metin There probably is some browser API exposing that too, to some extent, via what MIME types have application handlers. Though I'm not sure you can get much data there without possibly bombarding the user with download-prompt dialogs.