Popular Steam Extension 'Inventory Helper' Spies On Users, Says Report (windowsreport.com)
SmartAboutThings shares a report from Windows Report: If you installed the "Steam Inventory Helper" on your computer, you may want to uninstall it as soon as possible. Recent reports suggest that this extension used to buy and sell digital goods on Steam is spying on its users. Redditor Wartab made a thorough analysis of the tool and reached the following conclusions: The spyware code tracks your every move starting from the moment you visit a website until you leave. It also tracks where you are coming from on the site; Steam Inventory Helper tracks your clicks, including when you are moving your mouse and when you are having focus in an input; When you click a link, it sends the link URL to a background script; Fortunately, the code does not monitor what you type. Apparently, the purpose of this spyware is to collect data about gamers for promotional purposes.
Yet another argument showing why it is better to favour software with visible source code.
Not that the GPL contains "magic pixie dust" in it that miraculously repel this kind of abuse.
But it just makes this kind of analysis a little bit more easy.
Here author manager to get a hang of what the extension is doing, because it's still in javascript (theoretically humean-readable) though still heavily obscured (the analyst provides links to slightly de-obscured files).
If this was a completely opaque closed source binary, analysis would have been much more difficult.
On the other hand, if this was a completely free/libre opensource software, this kind of analysis would have been much easier and could happen much earlier (and you would expect de-spyware-ified forks to pop-up on github at the same time as such disclosure).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
There's nothing people won't do for a little money in their pocket.
Could it just be related to creating and working with a custom ui on the steam website?
from a nobody? Most of these seem to be from anonymous people hiding behind web email and aliases and you are literally giving them admin access to your computer.
I have maybe 2-3 extensions and they are from known entities
Burn, burn in your shameful sins, beef eater.
visited the first link and at the top of the article is a link to Reimage plus, a tool for "fixing common windows problems". It is also a 100% safe download (because they say so) and the link is to an unknown binary blob (.exe, thankfully i cant even run it)
can we bring back news for nerds? linking to such a click bait website is bulshit and you (the editors) should know better! seriously, the reddit link would have been enough for this story
I'm currently examining all the source code on my system that I got in 1992. I should be done in another 77 years. Until then, NO NEW SOFTWARE!
Que es tu pinche problema, maricon?
For better or worse we now live in a world where millions of people will happily install a calculator app even when they are told up front that it needs access to their network contact list, and call history. Or where they'll happily use Facebook to communicate with their friends, in spite of knowing that it's spyware.
People now accept ANY level of unnecessary spying, for any reason. The days when that was considered unacceptable are over. The ship has sailed. So now instead of 232356774 spywares there are 232356775. OK...
So what about a case like that of Firefox?
Firefox is a large, open source application created by what at least some people consider to be a "reputable" organization.
The source code is available for review. The source code isn't obfuscated or otherwise obscured.
Yet anybody who claims that Firefox protects their privacy probably hasn't actually looked at Firefox's privacy policy.
Below are some excerpts from the Firefox privacy policy that is dated July 31, 2017.
Be sure to notice the type of information being collected and possibly even transmitted to third parties (including Google, some "Leanplum" company, a "mobile analytics vendor", and "certain developers"). We see terms like:
Here are the excerpts:
He's being realistic. Code review takes time. Proper code review takes even longer. With even small OSes running into the millions of lines of code, and the applications running on top of it having millions more lines of code, it would take years, if not decades,
And again, as I've said starting the thread :
access to the source code helps a lot.
In this case, because Linux kernel is GPL (and so is most of the GNU userland), it means way much more people can - if they want (and in practice, they do) - investigate to find problematic pieces of code.
Nobody said that the millions of lines of code needs to be investigate one-by-one and that all the decades must happen serially.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
That's what Reproducible Builds are for. {...} At a Debian repository near you (and not only there).
Which is the entire point of reproducible builds... :-P
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The "Report" is trash.
> "Steam has yet to issue any comment on this matter."
I loathe Steam with a passion, but this is THIRD PARTY EXTENSION not made or supported by Steam, why the fuck would steam comment on it?
> "What do you think about Steam spying on its users? "
Steam most certainly does "spy on its users", but this THIRD PARTY EXTENSION is not part of that.
Some people will try to justify this nonsense by saying, "It's ok, they disclose what they're collecting and sharing!" or the even more idiotic, "It's ok, you can disable some of this data collection and sharing!".
None of that matters!
None of that matters, indeed.
My whole point is that :
- even if Mozilla DID NOT disclose it.
- even if it was NOT POSSIBLE to disable.
Because the source code of Firefox is accessible, ANALYSTS WOULD STILL be able to notice this.
And DEVELOPERS WOULD STILL be able to make fork with possibility to disable.
(see: TorBrowser)
Again, like I said aboe. GPL is NOT "magic pixie dust".
But helps lowering the bar to this kind of control.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
OMG, users are being spied on by an app! Quick, delete it! Do continue to use Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Verizon products, though.
Always assume that any software that can talk over the internet is spying on you. It seems to be true more often than not.
... or anything else for that matter.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Windowsreport.com? No thank you.