Microsoft is running one of the largest corporate espionage operations in modern history. Every time any of LinkedIn’s one billion users visits linkedin.com, hidden code searches their computer for installed software, collects the results, and transmits them to LinkedIn’s servers and to third-party companies including an American-Israeli cybersecurity firm. The user is never asked. Never told. LinkedIn’s privacy policy does not mention it. Because LinkedIn knows each user’s real name, employer, and job title, it is not searching anonymous visitors. It is searching identified people at identified companies. Millions of companies. Every day. All over the world.

Microsoft is running one of the largest corporate espionage operations in modern history.

Every time any of LinkedIn’s one billion users visits linkedin.com, hidden code searches their computer for installed software, collects the results, and transmits them to LinkedIn’s servers and to third-party companies including an American-Israeli cybersecurity firm.

The user is never asked. Never told. LinkedIn’s privacy policy does not mention it.

Because LinkedIn knows each user’s real name, employer, and job title, it is not searching anonymous visitors. It is searching identified people at identified companies. Millions of companies. Every day. All over the world.

  • GreenShimada@lemmy.worldEnglish
    426·
    11 hours ago

    This is straight up misinformation. First off, it’s perfectly legal.

    LinkedIn does browser fingerprinting. It’s the same thing Google and Meta do. It’s how Google Ads is shifting to a post-adblocker revenue stream.

    Browser fingerprints show fonts used, audio codecs, WebGL render data, processor, operating system - enough that if you add up several factors together, it makes a statistically unique fingerprint. it does NOT scan applications on your computer. It can’t. It DOES scan which browser extensions you have running (if they affect page loading).

    If you check your email and then close that and go to Google in an incognito window and search for porn - Google will fucking know what you’re looking at. Gmail and all Google apps all fingerprint, and then you’ll notice how Google ads trackers are on most sites online? Yep. That’s how they track you.

    Use a VPN? Use an ad blocker? Great - Google doesn’t care. Google can track your fingerprint.

    See your own fingerprint - check how it know it’s you visit after visit.

    https://fingerprint.com/

    https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/

    https://amiunique.org/

    • Bloefz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      6 hours ago

      They also scan for thousands of extensions. The only reason it doesn’t do this on Firefox is that Firefox randomises the uuid of extensions every time. Chrome doesn’t.

    • PumaStoleMyBluff@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      7 hours ago

      Fonts, codecs, hardware, OS, extensions are all parts of a computer that never ever need to be transmitted to a website for it to function. Any information about them should be sandboxed, and if the website wants to display differently based on them, it can send static data or code in and get nothing back out.

  • magnue@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    11 hours ago

    I’ll never join LinkedIn. Pointless middlemen in job searches. A social network people are forced to use.