The Karma connection in Chrome Web Store

Re:The Karma connection in Chrome Web Store by semenko on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @02:17PM (#41998477)

I was optimistically hoping some of the MV3 changes would result in Chrome webstore policy enforcement being standardized, but that hasn't happened.

Sensor Tower (https://sensortower.com/) makes a lot of popular extensions, like StayFocusd https://www.stayfocusd.com/. They seem to resell ad data (in violation of [1]?) and ship likely obfuscated code [2] (in violation of [3]?), but there's no enforcement or even clear reporting mechanism.

[1] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/webstore/program-policies/...

[2] https://robwu.nl/crxviewer/?crx=https%3A%2F%2Fclients2.googl...

[3] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/webstore/program-policies/...

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Re:The Karma connection in Chrome Web Store by Raed667 on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @02:55PM (#41998859)

Event with MV3 you still have access to `chrome.webRequest.onBeforeRequest` and content scripts, so this particular issue won't be 100% solved.

I don't think the solution is technical. The solution would be a strict policy, and nuke every extension and publisher from the store who even hints at doing this kind of BS.

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Re:The Karma connection in Chrome Web Store by palant on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @06:39PM (#42001289)

Note: I am the author of this article.

MV3 makes it considerably harder to introduce a security vulnerability, but it doesn’t really help with outright malicious extensions. In the end this isn’t an issue which can be solved by technical means. It’s a moderation issue, and Google currently seems to be scaling back moderation despite not being great at it to start with.

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