- Report Alleges LinkedIn Scans Browsers for Extensions
- Complaint data used against competitors on “BrowserGate”
- LinkedIn denies misuse, calls allegations smear campaign
A new report alleges that LinkedIn uses hidden JavaScript to scan its visitors’ browsers for installed extensions, look for those that compete with its own sales tools, and then twist its users until they stop using them and choose LinkedIn products.
However, the social network says it is a smear campaign led by a disgruntled extension developer who lost a court battle in Germany.
A “LinkedIn commercial users association” called Fairlinked eV published a report detailing “BrowserGate” – claiming that LinkedIn searches thousands of browser extensions and links the results to identifiable user profiles – and when scanning, LinkedIn collects personal and corporate information.
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Scans confirmed, reasons no.
“LinkedIn is looking at more than 200 products that compete directly with its own sales tools, including Apollo, Lusha, and ZoomInfo. Because LinkedIn knows each user’s employer, it can map which companies use which competing products. It is scraping the customer lists of thousands of software companies from their users’ browsers without anyone knowing,” the report states.
“Then it uses what it finds. LinkedIn has already sent compliance threats to users of third-party tools, using data obtained through this covert scanning to identify its targets.”
Apparently the scanning part is true. beepcomputer I ran a separate test and saw a JavaScript that searched for exactly 6,236 browser extensions. The post says that many of the extensions analyzed are related to LinkedIn, but some have seemingly unrelated features: language and grammar extensions, tools for tax professionals, and others.
“The script also collects a wide range of browser and device data, including CPU core count, available memory, screen resolution, time zone, language settings, battery status, audio information, and storage functions.” beepcomputer information.
In response to the allegations, LinkedIn says it is seeking extensions, but it does so to prevent users from violating the site’s terms of use. It also claims that the author of BrowserGate is running a smear campaign after losing a court battle in Germany.
Protect user privacy? Or rape him?
“The claims made on the website linked here are completely wrong. The person behind them is subject to an account restriction for scraping and other violations of LinkedIn’s Terms of Service,” LinkedIn’s response reads.
“To protect our members’ privacy, their data, and ensure site stability, we 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 web pages. We can detect the presence of these extensions by checking if that static resource URL exists. This detection is visible within 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 obtaining an excessive amount of data from other members, which on a large scale impacts the stability of the site. We do not use this data to infer confidential information about members.
For additional context, in retaliation for the account restriction of the owner of this website, they attempted to obtain a court order in Germany, claiming that LinkedIn had violated several laws. The court ruled against him, finding that his claims against LinkedIn were baseless and, in fact, this individual’s data practices were against the law.
“Unfortunately, this is a case of an individual who lost in the court of law but seeks to relitigate in the court of public opinion without regard for accuracy.”
Apparently, the author of BrowserGate created a browser extension called “Teamfluence” that LinkedIn said violated the site’s terms of use for automated data collection.
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