Readit Newsmfrisbie commented on Osprey – Browser extension that protects you from malicious websites github.com/Foulest/Osprey... · Posted by u/CHEF-KOCH
So this extension is feeding a stream of your browsing activity to a bunch of third party services? No thanks.
Nice. I use one in the chrome store called News Feed Eradicator. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/news-feed-eradicato...
Looks nice, but that extension is a high-value acquisition target for bad actors, and there's nothing but an email for contact information.
Sideloading eliminates this risk completely.
I kept catching myself scrolling down their idiotic feed and wondering what the hell I was doing. Mindless dreck, all of it. Yet I still get cold inbound from it that turns into business, so I can't just abandon the platform entirely.
I wrote a ~50 LOC browser extension that always redirects away from the feed to your profile. Works great, sideload and forget.
mfrisbie commented on Ask HN: To those with successful browser extension(s), how did you grow it? · Posted by u/dandrew5
> Podcast hosts are always looking for guests, and most of them didn't cost me a thing.
That implies that for some podcasts you can pay to be a guest?
Some charge a nominal fee, and one I had to travel to a studio to record. Made for a nice weekend in LA with my wife.
mfrisbie commented on Ask HN: To those with successful browser extension(s), how did you grow it? · Posted by u/dandrew5
I run Track & Trace Tools[1], an extension directly targeted at the legal cannabis industry's main compliance platform Metrc.
Since it's targeted at businesses and not consumers, word of mouth has been powerful for me. I've rapidly grown in the state of Michigan thanks to a few very enthusiastic operators.
I also went on a slate of podcasts last year to talk about (read: promote) my product. Podcast hosts are always looking for guests, and most of them didn't cost me a thing.
It's also been helpful to be a Google Developer Expert for web extensions, the Chrome team interviewed me and that gave me a platform to talk about what I was working on[2].
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mfrisbie commented on Detect when your installed Chrome extensions have changed owners github.com/classvsoftware... · Posted by u/ben_s
Good find! I've dug a bit and the extension, at least for now, does not send any metadata associated to your browser[1], only a comma separated list of extension IDs. Of course the IP could be easily used.
Looking at the result from the API of one extension I had installed[2], it lists metadata associated to the developer. I've tried to use the `chrome.management.get(id)` Chrome API and it does not return this information, and there does not seem to be a way to get the content of the manifest.json programatically. Therefore, to do the job of the extension as it is, it does need an external source.
[1]: https://github.com/classvsoftware/under-new-management/blob/...
[2]: https://api.extensionboost.com/v1/developer?extension_ids=gh...
I tried very hard to find a way around using an external server, as I knew HN would harp on the related privacy issues. No luck.