
Show HN: A Chrome extension for getting to the HN thread for the current page - michaelfairley
http://mfairley.com/hnd/
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mcrittenden
Also see:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hhedbplnihmkekhgma...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hhedbplnihmkekhgmaoikgfbkjjaocnl?hc=search&hcp=main)

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michaelfairley
There are some security and privacy issues with that extension. It requires
permission to run javascript in the context of every page, so the author could
auto-update the plugin to inject malicious code in your banking session.

It also sends every url you visit to HNSearch, which a lot of people were
unhappy with from a privacy perspective. My extension sends MD5(url), which
makes it nearly impossible for me to track someones browsing behavior.

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rwolf
"My extension sends MD5(url), which makes it nearly impossible for me to track
someones browsing behavior."

You're kidding, right? In order to tell if there is a HN thread about the
page, you also MD5(url) all HN threads. If you find a match, you send the
thread to the user. Therefore, you know the user is visiting the url the HN
thread is about!

Let's not even talk about how cheap it is to test for MD5 collisions against
popular urls, or the how easy it is to determine if the user has visited an
arbitrary url.

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mwhooker
very nice. This is something I'm very interested in. I even wrote something
like it which uses a bookmarklet, though I believe browser extensions are the
way to go.

<http://omnigeist.com/> <https://github.com/mwhooker/omnigeist.js>

It was mostly a vehicle for me to learn coffeescript & node.js, so it's got
some rough edges.

