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mirimir

OK, but why does LinkedIn scan extensions?

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To flag accounts that are scraping data or "revealing" email addresses.

Negative view: they're blocking people from circumventing their paid features

Positive view: they're protecting their other users from getting spammed

A lot of these are used as CRM type applications where people would love it if LinkedIn just charged for access to a more comprehensive API instead. LinkedIns messaging UI sucks, and ironically one of the reasons to want to use CRMs like Nimble to interact with your LinkedIn connections is to be able to better track communication with them so you don't spam. But of course people will use it to spam too.

If LinkedIn offered API access to messaging in a way that let CRMs work with them instead of feel forced to circumvent them I think most who want to use it legitimately would be perfectly happy to have LinkedIn impose various usage limits and peotections even if paid.

They should see this as revenue potential: there are lots of potential to get companies with legitimate reasons for more integration than the current API to upsell their customers on paid LinkedIn features if they are able to offer it in an approved way, and I bet many would be happy to let LinkedIn monitor how it's used.

If they try to block access instead, they'll find more and more companies keep offering the same, but manually.

They want to block tools that offer functionality similar to their paid offerings.

LinkedIn contains lots of personal data, a large part of which is only available to users who are signed in and/or paid members. They want to protect this information from potential exfiltration by these extensions and their backing companies.

They have zero scruples. This is a company infamous for spamming people.

And, do they need to do it or are they just data mining?

If they don't need it, isn't it illegal to collect that data under the GDPR?

I don't see the repo actually saying they're collecting this data, i.e. sending it back to their servers. It may just be a "reverse adblocker" - a list of signatures of extensions that the website's JS will try to interfere with on the user end.

Who is going to stop them? I'm sure the data is worth >0 to them (or someone)

To fingerprint you via what you cremations you have installed to track your browsing habits.

More metadata to shape information... do you have ublock, authy, lastpass, bitmoji, etc. Could be anything from metrics, to useful interactions.

Got the dropbox extension, show an option to upload your resume from dropbox directly. etc.

Blocking ads, show integrated ads through a secondary channel.

I really don't understand the downvotes.

LinkedIn's reputation isn't so great. Primarily because they harvest user mailboxes, and spam endlessly about Mirimir (for example) inviting recipients to join their associate at LinkedIn. And it's not just annoying. Sometimes it hurts people's careers.

Oh, LinkedIn's reputation is deplorable... what they did to bypass security on iOS (and I think Android too) are particularly interesting (mail proxy). I'm not saying that metadata collection is good, or that there aren't nefarious reasons... I stated that was one reason, and it could be to offer features.

I only created a linkedin account to stop all the email invites... and even then, refuse to install their app (links pervasive in mobile web) and only accept connections to those I've met personally, and very few recruiters.

Fair enough. But some people just downvote anything even neutral about something that they hate.

That's a funny story. But I have a funnier one. Not long ago, maybe the last time LinkedIn came up on HN, I created a test LinkedIn account as Mirimir. Or at least, I attempted to. Given that I use VPNs, I got a cellphone text authentication prompt. But Mirimir doesn't have a cellphone, so I blew it off.

And here's the funny part. A few days later, Mirimir received email from LinkedIn, inviting him to join Mirimir's network on LinkedIn!

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