Google Chrome extensions

[Stancel]

So I'm looking through the Google Chrome extensions and a lot of them ask for my browsing history and my "data on all websites" now I don't know about you but this makes me a little insecure about my privacy, I am wondering what your opinion is on this.

[gnomeuser]

Asking for permission is a privacy feature, would you rather extensions just started reading the data they need for the functionality you request?

How e.g. do you intend to do blocking of ads without allowing the adblocker access to read data on websites?

[Stancel]

Asking for permission is a privacy feature, would you rather extensions just started reading the data they need for the functionality you request?

How e.g. do you intend to do blocking of ads without allowing the adblocker access to read data on websites?

And browsing history?

[Timmer1240]

That kind of made me uncomfortable too!

[gnomeuser]

And browsing history?

Same situation, how do you plan to implement anything that touches the history, e.g. for purposes of cleaning a specific site from the history.

The argument remains the same, you are complaining that extensions ask for permission. The alternatives remain:

a) not being able to provide the functionality
b) taking what the extension needs without asking

the fact that Chrome safeguards these things is a security and privacy feature.

Finally having access is not the same as broadcasting your data, it could be, the only way to be sure it is not is monitoring the code in action as well as having access to the source code. For an example hereof you can look at the flackblock extension which is open source.

[Stancel]

Gnomeuser, your answer makes no sense. I'm not fighting with you but....I have no idea what you're going on about with this "cleaning a site from your history" idea as to why an extension would need access to my browser history. Now it's "cleaning" MY history? Do you mean it's cleaning out the data for itself?:lolflag:

[Stancel]

and before you call me dumb I know that there is an extension which cleans your browsing history but you are acting like that is a feature of EVERY extension that asks for it.

[lovinglinux]

I would be more concerned about the fact that Google doesn't review any extensions published on Chrome gallery. Although Google extensions needs to explicitly declare in the code what they have permission to access, which increases security, a malicious extensions would include all kinds of permissions to allow itself. Since Google doesn't review the extensions, you should be extra cautious before installing Chrome extensions.