this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2026
198 points (82.4% liked)

Technology

83601 readers
2463 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
L3s@hackingne.ws
198
LinkedIn Is Illegally Searching Your Computer (browsergate.eu)
submitted 6 days ago by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/technology@lemmy.world
40 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47613981

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] runit@lemmy.zip 1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The reason is fingerprinting. Verrrry old technique. Adtech stuff. You might collect browser extension, webgl information, CPU core count, screen resolution, IP address, reverse dns, locale, headers, user agent, akamai hash, etc. The reason is so that these metrics can then be enriched to build a consumer profile and used in analytics

[–] TootGuitar@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Thanks, I worked in adtech for a number of years so I’m aware of this use case. I could tell some stories that would likely surprise you at how sophisticated that industry has been for a long time, even as long as 10-15 years ago.

But the parent post specifically said this was “sensible” and maybe “normal” to do this to decide how to render a page. My question was specifically how that claim makes sense at all.