Mastodawn

Sébastien Barbieri 7h ago

"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."

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

Bruno Miguel 12h ago

I have to find the focus and mental energy to read this LinkedIn stuff top to bottom, but from what I've read so far, it's very, very bad!

Grant_H 11h ago

Avoiding Chrome (Chromium?) browsers seems a possible start to mitigation?

Bruno Miguel 11h ago

@grant_h maybe. But given this on Chromium-based browsers, there's a chance that something similar might exist for other browsers, too

Torf und Schnee 10h ago

@brunomiguel @grant_h details matter, though. Especially as the info tells about browser extensions rather than software (which browser normally should not even offer access to).

Bruno Miguel 10h ago

@torf @grant_h browser extension info can be useful for a malicious actor

Torf und Schnee 9h ago

@brunomiguel @grant_h still, there is a significant difference in the access level.

@brunomiguel @grant_h I agree. If they don't have something like that for Firefox and other browsers, they'll make it.

And don't think for a moment that they're the only ones doing it.

@brunomiguel @grant_h it does. It's called "fingerprinting". This is the norm for large websites that advertise. They do this to assign digital IDs to everyone so they can build advertising profiles & sell all the data. "Age Verification" will make this problem worse because it'll link these profiles to a government ID.

@brunomiguel @grant_h all browsers suffer from this, its a javascript call implemented by all major browser to query installed fonts that can be abused (iirc but its been a while)

Use an extension like CanvasBlocker to spoof these requests: https://github.com/kkapsner/CanvasBlocker

GitHub - kkapsner/CanvasBlocker: A Firefox extension to protect from being fingerprinted.

A Firefox extension to protect from being fingerprinted. - kkapsner/CanvasBlocker

GitHub

Kierkethumbs up convincingly 9h ago

@brunomiguel 💩

@brunomiguel
Even if it were mentioned, I'd have to visit the site to read the privacy policy in order to know about that in the first place. That's the first problem. The second is that there should not be any mechanism in my browser that allows them to do that automatically. That's fucking crazy.

LukefromDC 9h ago

@brunomiguel Let's see them try that on something like Qubea, or where a browser is otherwise run in an isolated VM.

Glad I don't have account and refuse to touch them.

Olivier Burnier 8h ago

@brunomiguel I use a lot #LinkedIn. How can I prevent that and still use LI ?

Pino Carafa 8h ago

@OlivierBurnier @brunomiguel

1. Why would you?

But if you must

2. Use Firefox or one of its forks. If you don't know what "fork" means, don't worry about it and just use Firefox

P.S. I would not be surprised to hear they implemented something equally shitty there.

@OlivierBurnier @brunomiguel If you use a clean Chrome install without any browser extensions, there is nothing for them to detect. I believe incognito mode might also work.

Nix is Ready for Spring 8h ago

@brunomiguel holy shit this is creepy as fuck

Cairo Braga 8h ago

@brunomiguel I've read the summary and some other parts and: this is some NSA-ass shit!!!

RevPudDudley 8h ago

@brunomiguel It's been so long since I was at netscape,
started to forget why I hate MS so much

Mighty Orbot 8h ago

@brunomiguel “hidden code searches their computer for installed software" — this is a gross exaggeration; it’s searching the browser for installed plugins and browser-accessible hardware. Still bad, but not nearly as all-encompassing as the quote implies.

https://browsergate.eu/how-it-works/

The Attack: How it works

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. The entire process happens in the background. There is no consent dialog, no notification, no mention of it in LinkedIn’s privacy policy. This page documents exactly how the system works, with line references and code excerpts from LinkedIn’s production JavaScript bundle.

BrowserGate

Face Thumb 7h ago

@brunomiguel "hidden code searches their computer for installed software"

Not to defend sleazy behaviour from a sleazy company, but that's not quite true, it detects browser extensions in the current browser, it doesn't break out of browser isolation and go search the hard drive for files like an antivirus for example.

It is still a reason to get off privacy invading software/websites like Chrome/Edge, and Linkedin, though.

@chrisp @brunomiguel yep, thank you for pointing this out.

i agree that this is terrible behavior from linkedin. still, it must not be exaggerated what's going on: it's limited to installed extensions in the browser, specifically those that expose assets to websites.

Bruno Miguel 6h ago

@luatic @chrisp I've read more information about this (still haven't read everything due to health reasons), and they do seem to overstate some stuff. Still, it's creepy af behaviour from LinkedIn

@brunomiguel If only Matrix from R. Hill will be little easier to use it will be maybe not 100 % safe but at least 75% and this is a lot of. Easy to use I mean not extension complicated but how it slow down and block net flow.

Ray McCarthy 6h ago

@brunomiguel
So if I don't visit LinkedIn
Use Firefox with Umatrix blocking most scripts by default.
I'm OK?
I deleted my LinkedIn account years ago when it enabled spammers.
Then deleted Facebook
Not sure if I deleted Twitter before or after Musk took it.

⁂ Fish Id Wardrobe 2h ago

@brunomiguel searches for installed _browser extensions_ , not all the software on your computer. it's bad, but it's not as bad as the headline makes it seem.