The claims made on the website linked here are plain wrong. The person behind them is subject to an account restriction for scraping and other violations of LinkedIn’s Terms of Service.
To protect the privacy of our members, their data, and to ensure site stability, we do look for extensions that scrape data without members’ consent or otherwise violate LinkedIn’s Terms of Service.
Here’s why: some extensions have static resources (images, javascript) available to inject into our webpages. We can detect the presence of these extensions by checking if that static resource URL exists. This detection is visible inside the Chrome developer console. We use this data to determine which extensions violate our terms, to inform and improve our technical defenses, and to understand why a member account might be fetching an inordinate amount of other members' data, which at scale, impacts site stability. We do not use this data to infer sensitive information about members.
For additional context, in retaliation for this website owner’s account restriction, they attempted to obtain an injunction in Germany, alleging LinkedIn had violated various laws. The court ruled against them and found their claims against LinkedIn had no merit, and in fact, this individual’s own data practices ran afoul of the law.
Unfortunately, this is a case of an individual who lost in the court of law, but is seeking to re-litigate in the court of public opinion without regard for accuracy.
All illegal or unethical means can be explained, but not justified, by their ends.
I'm quite sure having unfettered insight into the browser environments of your users makes enforcing your Terms of Service much easier, but held against the (even minute) risk of exposing one of users' political, religious or sexual preferences, any of which might carry with it massive risk of bodily injury or death in many parts of the globe? I'm sorry but ToS enforcement does not even begin to clear that bar.
If you don't want your users to scrape large parts your website, have you considered just blocking users with outsized traffic usage and not violating their privacy in the process?
Justifying this invasion of privacy as a means of defending LinkedIn against the apparently existential threat posed by something as pedestrian as scraping is especially ridiculous when considering how LinkedIn managed to even get off the ground in the first place: By invading the privacy of its unwitting users by scraping their contacts and impersonating them via email[1].
> To protect the privacy of our members, their data, and to ensure site stability, we do look for extensions that scrape data without members’ consent or otherwise violate LinkedIn’s Terms of Service.
What a nightmare! Are your findings and this list of malicious extensions published somewhere?
I look forward for you to post a rationale for the site reliably for these 6,000 extensions.
Not clear why it needs to scan for Amazon image downloaders, Rufus conversation extracters, Amazon delivery scheduler, Product Scanner, or pharmacy operations.
I have trouble trusting anything run by Microsoft, and in particular anything run by LinkedIn considering it is the absolute worst site that I have to use.
Microsoft has lied in the past about what information that they do and don't store, why should we believe you now?
Micrôsoft does indeed have a lofty and sturdy moral high ground from which to denounce scrapers and breaches of intellectual property rights and website TOS violations, having never invested in OpenAI.
This entire response is full of lies. Having done a cursory search of the extensions, you do target ones that are based on religious affiliation regardless of the DOM actions they take.
Your comment is disingenuous, insulting and has only served to make me check more extensions and only browse LinkedIn in a secure, private window.
The Bavarian Central Cybercrime Prosecution Office in Bamberg has opened a investigation into this matter (Case File No 650 UJs 2809/26) and I am sure they are interested in talking to you.
They would love to hear how this is all plain wrong.
To protect the privacy of our members, their data, and to ensure site stability, we do look for extensions that scrape data without members’ consent or otherwise violate LinkedIn’s Terms of Service.
Here’s why: some extensions have static resources (images, javascript) available to inject into our webpages. We can detect the presence of these extensions by checking if that static resource URL exists. This detection is visible inside the Chrome developer console. We use this data to determine which extensions violate our terms, to inform and improve our technical defenses, and to understand why a member account might be fetching an inordinate amount of other members' data, which at scale, impacts site stability. We do not use this data to infer sensitive information about members.
For additional context, in retaliation for this website owner’s account restriction, they attempted to obtain an injunction in Germany, alleging LinkedIn had violated various laws. The court ruled against them and found their claims against LinkedIn had no merit, and in fact, this individual’s own data practices ran afoul of the law.
Unfortunately, this is a case of an individual who lost in the court of law, but is seeking to re-litigate in the court of public opinion without regard for accuracy.