https://github.com/jswanner/DontF-WithPaste?tab=readme-ov-fi...
[0] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/don-t-fuck-wi...
https://github.com/aaronraimist/DontFuckWithPaste/blob/8cb68...
(But for this extension I don’t give it all site permissions anyway. I just enable on site by site basis)
Of course you're right in a technical sense. They could do whatever they want later.
But still let's celebrate and attitude like this rather than criticizing it.
So now we'd have to trust the author to do thorough vetting of a potential buyer and also not sell if vetting is inconclusive. And this against an adversary aiming to cheat their way past vetting.
Might be a cynical take, but it is not one without reason.
As a sibling comment points out, this is due to the permission model. This doesn't let the author entirely of the hook though: the permissions model created the situation, the author chose a particular path. The consequences may not have been foreseen by either, but they do exist and affect users.
perhaps the most reasonable or even only possible path if they wanted their plugin to be able to do what they wanted it to do, which was to keep sites and from messing with your copy and paste functionality - in other words to prevent minor maliciousness.
on edit: sure, to provide the smoothest behavior, but really if it wasn't smooth people would be irritated and not want to use it. I know if I was implementing for myself I would want it to be smooth.
I understand the whole "bad things can be done" perspective, but here for some reason I fall under a "trust but verify" perspective instead.
No, it's called security.
Let's put it this way: there have been FLOSS projects whose maintainers intentionally pushed compromised code to unsuspecting end users. See for example the colors attack.
What leads you to believe that good intentions are enough?
Following this logic, we should all stop using any and all software for which we haven't personally inspected the full source code for, since this could happen to any of them.
A more reasonable take would be to assess your risk tolerance and the possible benefit for each piece of software you install, and then make the best decision for yourself based on that assessment.
For some people, that means not running an extension that provides minor quality of life improvements due to the possibility of it turning malicious further down the road. For other people, it means the opposite.
Not sure why every security-related conversation devolves into one extreme vs. another extreme. Security must be appropriately balanced against risk tolerance, inconvenience, and a number of individual concerns and preferences.
I haven't? My first comment on this entire topic is the one you are replying to... And it can be summed up as "risk tolerance and security decisions is personal".
Yikes.
How am I supposed to know a direct reply to my comment, saying "if _you personally_" is not actually directed at me personally?
If it wasn't directed at me, I'm not sure why you replied to my comment at all.
Are you talking to me in this comment, or just generally? I have trouble telling.
It isn’t the developer’s fault that the ecosystem is dumb, but they could just note the limitation.
One doesn't need broad security permissions.
For example I have an extension that lets you right click an image and rotate it by -90/+90/180 degrees. All I want is for the browser to hit me up when there is a `<img>` tag, but that is not an option. Either I have to white list every page separately in the code or ask the user to white list every single page or just ask for full read and write permissions for every single web page the user visits.
Maybe. But this is not clear at all from the given explanation:
> In order to provide the smoothest experience as possible, the extension needs to know when you change active tabs.
The "smoothest experience"... This is corporate wooden language, and sounds disrespectful towards the users. Why does the extension need, precisely, to deal with tabs at all? A smooth experience would allow the users the choice to disable this permission while still working correctly on a single tab (as the previous version did). If this is not clearly explained upfront, it sounds like bullshit, even if it isn't.
Maybe there is no alternative way to do this. But certainly there is an better way to explain this.
No need for full read and write permission.
And whenever the package repository is missing a browser extension I need, I contribute the package and take responsibility for its ongoing vetting and maintenance.
Nah mate, we at Google, (bless them Mozilla crooks giving us control over their extensions), don't care about actual issues, we only update extensions to make money and limit user freedom.
if you're using it under chrome you're already working under the profit making goal of a failing advertising company. how worse do you think it can get?
The problem is that even if I read the code, or more likely chose to trust that someone has, it's not guaranteed to remain true for future updates. The author's scruples may weaken with time, or they might sell the extension, etc. (I think Chrome's extensions auto-update, but even if they didn't I'd still have to remember that this extension is one that I can't assume it's safe to update.)