How Amazon Assistant lets Amazon track your every move on the web
I recently noticed that Amazon is promoting their Amazon Assistant extension quite aggressively. With success: while not all browsers vendors provide usable extension statistics, it would appear that this extension has beyond 10 million users across Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Edge. Reason enough to look into what this extension is doing and how.
Here I must say that the privacy expectations for shopping assistants aren’t very high to start with. Still, I was astonished to discover that Amazon built the perfect machinery to let them track any Amazon Assistant user or all of them: what they view and for how long, what they search on the web, what accounts they are logged into and more. Amazon could also mess with the web experience at will and for example hijack competitors’ web shops.
https://palant.info/2021/03/08/how-amazon-assistant-lets-amazon-track-your-every-move-on-the-web/
#amazon #assistant #browser #extension #privacy
I recently noticed that Amazon is promoting their Amazon Assistant extension quite aggressively. With success: while not all browsers vendors provide usable extension statistics, it would appear that this extension has beyond 10 million users across Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Edge. Reason enough to look into what this extension is doing and how.
Here I must say that the privacy expectations for shopping assistants aren’t very high to start with. Still, I was astonished to discover that Amazon built the perfect machinery to let them track any Amazon Assistant user or all of them: what they view and for how long, what they search on the web, what accounts they are logged into and more. Amazon could also mess with the web experience at will and for example hijack competitors’ web shops.
https://palant.info/2021/03/08/how-amazon-assistant-lets-amazon-track-your-every-move-on-the-web/
#amazon #assistant #browser #extension #privacy
Almost Secure
How Amazon Assistant lets Amazon track your every move on the web
Amazon Assistant browser extension delegates its wide range of privileges to Amazon web services. The potential for misuse is enormous.
Forwarded from BlackBox (Security) Archiv
What’s in your browser (backup)?
It’s not every day that I wake up thinking about how people back up their web browsers. Mostly this is because I don’t feel the need to back up any aspect of my browsing. Some people lovingly maintain huge libraries of bookmarks and use fancy online services to organize them. I pay for one of those because I aspire to be that kind of person, but I’ve never been organized enough to use it.
In fact, the only thing I want from my browser is for my history to please go away, preferably as quickly as possible. My browser is a part of my brain, and backing my thoughts up to a cloud provider is the most invasive thing I can imagine. Plus, I’m constantly imagining how I’ll explain specific searches to the FBI.
All of these thoughts are apropos a Twitter thread I saw last night from a Chrome developer, which purports to explain why “browser sync” features (across several platforms) don’t provide end-to-end encryption by default.
https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2021/03/25/whats-in-your-browser-backup/
#chrome #browser #backup #sync #encryption #thinkabout
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_FR
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_EN
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_DE
📡@BlackBox_Archiv
📡@NoGoolag
It’s not every day that I wake up thinking about how people back up their web browsers. Mostly this is because I don’t feel the need to back up any aspect of my browsing. Some people lovingly maintain huge libraries of bookmarks and use fancy online services to organize them. I pay for one of those because I aspire to be that kind of person, but I’ve never been organized enough to use it.
In fact, the only thing I want from my browser is for my history to please go away, preferably as quickly as possible. My browser is a part of my brain, and backing my thoughts up to a cloud provider is the most invasive thing I can imagine. Plus, I’m constantly imagining how I’ll explain specific searches to the FBI.
All of these thoughts are apropos a Twitter thread I saw last night from a Chrome developer, which purports to explain why “browser sync” features (across several platforms) don’t provide end-to-end encryption by default.
https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2021/03/25/whats-in-your-browser-backup/
#chrome #browser #backup #sync #encryption #thinkabout
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_FR
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_EN
📡@cRyPtHoN_INFOSEC_DE
📡@BlackBox_Archiv
📡@NoGoolag
A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering
Why the FBI can’t get your browsing history from Apple iCloud (and other scary stories)
It’s not every day that I wake up thinking about how people back up their web browsers. Mostly this is because I don’t feel the need to back up any aspect of my browsing. Some people lo…