New “BrowserGate” report claims LinkedIn secretly scans user browsers for installed extensions and collects device data


A new report is alleging LinkedIn uses hidden JavaScript to scan its visitors’ browsers for installed extensions, looks for those that compete with its own sales tools, and then twists its users’ arms until they stop using those and pick LinkedIn’s products, instead.

However the social network says this is a smear campaign run by a disgruntled extensions developer who lost a court battle in Germany. An “association of commercial LinkedIn users” called Fairlinked e.V published a report detailing “BrowserGate” – claiming LinkedIn scans for thousands of browser extensions and ties the results to identifiable user profiles – and by scanning, LinkedIn harvests personal and corporate information.

Read more…
Source: TechRadar News


Sign up for the Cyber Security Review Newsletter
The latest cyber security news and insights delivered right to your inbox


Related:

  • Philippines: Department of Education checking data breach after hacking

    February 14, 2024

    The Department of Education (DepEd) is examining its systems for possible data breaches after reports of hackers allegedly harvesting 750 gigabytes of data containing sensitive information on banking details, students, teachers and more. DeepWeb Konek, a collective of cybersecurity practitioners, reported yesterday morning on X that it monitored a post by a “threat actor” in the ...

  • The Risks Of The #Monikerlink Bug In Microsoft Outlook And The Big Picture

    February 14, 2024

    Recently, Check Point Research released a white paper titled “The Obvious, the Normal, and the Advanced: A Comprehensive Analysis of Outlook Attack Vectors”, detailing various attack vectors on Outlook to help the industry understand the security risks the popular Outlook app may bring into organizations. As mentioned in the paper, Check Point researches discovered an interesting ...

  • US military notifies 20,000 of data breach after cloud email leak

    February 14, 2024

    The U.S. Department of Defense is notifying tens of thousands of individuals that their personal information was exposed in an email data spill last year. According to the breach notification letter sent out to affected individuals on February 1, the Defense Intelligence Agency — the DOD’s military intelligence agency — said, “numerous email messages were inadvertently ...

  • Prudential reveals it was hit by data breach

    February 14, 2024

    Hackers were able to break into one of the largest life insurance companies in the United States and stole sensitive employee and contractor data. Prudential Financial has filed an 8-K form with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) detailing the attack, according to a report. As per the filing, unnamed threat actors accessed the networks ...

  • TicTacToe Dropper

    February 14, 2024

    While analyzing malware samples collected from several victims, the FortiGuard team identified a grouping of malware droppers used to deliver various final-stage payloads throughout 2023. Malware droppers are malicious software designed to deliver and execute additional malware on a victim system and are employed to obfuscate final payloads during load and initial execution. Droppers within this ...

  • Bank Of America Warns Customers Of Data Breach Following 2023 Hack

    February 13, 2024

    A November 2023 breach at IT consulting and service provider Infosys McCamish Systems has now been confirmed to have led to a data breach impacting Bank of America customers. The number of Bank of America customers impacted by the breach, including personally identifiable information such as social security numbers, account numbers, date of birth and addresses, ...