Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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Maker of Chrome extension with 300,000+ users tells of constant pressure to sell out (www.theregister.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by aranym@lemmy.name to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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"Actors who are asking me to add some tracking code are mostly interested in reselling users' data," Anashkin said. "Actors who want to purchase it outright will stuff it with malware depending on their level of greed: hijacking affiliate links, tampering with search results, showing popups with shady websites, etc."

Anashkin's experience appears to be fairly common. Developers have discussed these solicitations in online forums and several have written blog posts about selling extensions or partnership offers.

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[–] Mikina@programming.dev 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That's why I'm avoiding any extension I know I really don't need.

I've already burned myself once, when Nano Defender sold out and turned into a cookie-stealing malware. By the time it was one of few adblockers that were not being blocked by adblock killers. They've pushed a malware update through the Chrome web store, and started exploiting stolen cookies immediately.

It was a difficult day, where I had to explain to few of my exes that someone hacked their Instagram account due to an ad-blocker I've set up for them when we were dating few years ago.