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0 pointshoosieree2y ago0 comments

I wrote a Chrome extension[1] that reads no data but places a colored translucent div over the page. It requires that same "change all your data" permission.

My takeaway lesson is that the permissions model for extensions is confusing and nearly useless.

[1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/obscura/nhlkgnilpm...

0 comments

thfuran2y ago

How would you allow changing page contents with a narrow permission?

gnicholas2y ago

I also have a Chrome extension that needs access to page content on all pages, for the purpose of making text easier to read.

I could see distinguishing between extensions that in any way exfiltrate data from the pages you view, versus extensions that process the DOM and do something locally, but never send the data anywhere.

This requires a bit closer vetting than Google currently does, I think. To demonstrate that all processing happens locally, we encourage our users to load various websites with our extension toggled off, then go into airplane mode, and then turn our extension on. This doesn't strictly guarantee that we're not separately exfiltrating data (we aren't), but it does prove that our core process happens locally.

sebzim45002y ago

There are hundreds of thousands of extensions, and none of them make Google any money. Hard to see how they could justify any serious manual review.

1 more reply

youreincorrect2y ago

Do you suppose it's possible that accessing the DOM to add a div implicitly requires access to page data?

hoosiereeOP2y ago

I can see how many applications might want to read the page, but in my case it's not necessary. My extension tries to add a <div> under the <body> element, regardless of what's going on in the page. If there's no <body>, my extension stops working but the browser keeps going.

In short, if there were separate "read" and "write" permissions, I would only need "write". For privacy-concerned people, that's a very important distinction.

jabradoodle2y ago

It would be more complex than that given you can write arbitrary JavaScript that can read anything it likes and send it anywhere.

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