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I believe this ecosystem is simply an extension of the prior systray ecosystem wherein small, sometimes free windows applications would bundle a "helper" app th

by rsync 6y ago

I believe this ecosystem is simply an extension of the prior systray ecosystem wherein small, sometimes free windows applications would bundle a "helper" app that would basically spy on, and advertise to, the end user. This resulted, among other things, in an almost universal degradation of performance and usability of Windows XP/Vista for ... our parents and grandparents, basically.

agwa 6y ago
It's worse now because browser extensions auto-update which means that when a malicious actor buys an extension they gain access not only to future users but to all current users as well. Also, the Chrome Extension Store publicizes how many users each extension has, which allows malicious actors to operate extremely efficiently as they can easily find extensions to acquire and they know exactly what they're buying.
- sashagim 6y ago
  And even worse, because they don’t only hurt performance and usability, but they also report private information. Even is the data is sent anymously, the url itself may contain private information. For instance, Google themselves still allow sharing documents via a “private” link which is then stored on some monitoring service. And some of those services allow anyone access and search these urls for some premium plan.
danieldbird 6y ago
"our parents and grandparents, basically." I now feel officially elderly, Cheers for that. Lol.
- Aerroon 6y ago
  I think the implication here was that your parents and grandparents were less computer savvy at the time. This resulted in them installing all kinds of toolbars that destroyed performance.
throwawayboise 6y ago
Not just small free apps. Oracle would install the Ask toolbar when you installed their database server, unless you noticed and un-ticked that option in one of the installer dialogs. Oracle.
- akiselev 6y ago
  IIRC for a while the official Java runtime installer also installed the Ask toolbar.

by rsync 6y ago

agwa 6y ago

It's worse now because browser extensions auto-update which means that when a malicious actor buys an extension they gain access not only to future users but to all current users as well. Also, the Chrome Extension Store publicizes how many users each extension has, which allows malicious actors to operate extremely efficiently as they can easily find extensions to acquire and they know exactly what they're buying.

sashagim 6y ago
And even worse, because they don’t only hurt performance and usability, but they also report private information. Even is the data is sent anymously, the url itself may contain private information. For instance, Google themselves still allow sharing documents via a “private” link which is then stored on some monitoring service. And some of those services allow anyone access and search these urls for some premium plan.

danieldbird 6y ago

"our parents and grandparents, basically." I now feel officially elderly, Cheers for that. Lol.

Aerroon 6y ago
I think the implication here was that your parents and grandparents were less computer savvy at the time. This resulted in them installing all kinds of toolbars that destroyed performance.

throwawayboise 6y ago

Not just small free apps. Oracle would install the Ask toolbar when you installed their database server, unless you noticed and un-ticked that option in one of the installer dialogs. Oracle.

akiselev 6y ago
IIRC for a while the official Java runtime installer also installed the Ask toolbar.