Cybersecurity @sh.itjust.works Nemeski @lemm.ee 2 mo. ago

Popular Chrome Extension to Hide YouTube Shorts Turned Malicious

cyberinsider.com Popular Chrome Extension to Hide YouTube Shorts Turned Malicious

A Chrome extension titled "Hide YouTube Shorts," used by 100,000 people, was discovered to secretly collect users' browser activity.

19 comments

"BuT mAnIfEsT v3 wIlL pRoTeCt UsErS fRoM mAlIcIoUs ExTeNsIoNs."
- MV3 is clearly an adblocker sabotage op by Google, it shouldn't even be disputed at this point. The sooner people understand this the better.
  
  Everything google does at this point is to squeeze pennies from their revenue streams. They have become destiny manifested for enshittification.
A Chrome extension titled “Hide YouTube Shorts,” used by 100,000 people, was recently discovered to secretly collect users' browser activity, raising serious concerns about user privacy on Google Chrome Web Store.
You can just uBlock the thing on the front page.

If your browser recently tried killing uBlock - switch.
- I've been able to nix so many intrusive web elements with the ublock picker tool, often without leaving a trace due to modern web design practices. The YouTube shorts shelf is one such case, and it's shocking how well it worked!
  
  Yeah, uBlock mostly just adds CSS rules as display:none, and Google still pretends that's some kind of security nightmare.
  
  Because they're an abusive monopoly that must be shattered.
Probably an unpopular opinion, but I instead installed an extension to force shorts to play as normal videos. Some channels have shorts worth watching (imo), but this prevents endless scrolling through short after short, I have to intentionally choose to watch them by clicking on the specific thumbnail, every time.

I find it a decent compromise.
- whats the extension's name? + is it on ff?
  
  YouTube Shorts Normal Player
  
  https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-shorts-normal-player/
  
  Just to give a little bit of context, shorts can natively played as videos by replacing the www.youtube.com/shorts/[...} url with www.youtube.com/watch?v=[...], so a simple url replacer will do as well.
- Agreed. There is some exclusive content by my favorite creators that wouldnt really work as long form content.
  If it just wasnt vertical...
I like how the recommended remediation to this malicious extension is to install an extension for monitoring extensions.

Serious question though: is "can connect to network" a permission on Chrome apps? What about Mozilla? It seems like this, more than anything, is what needs to be locked down for all apps (beyond just browser extensions). Like on my MacBook for example, I have to give apps explicit permission to access folders like Documents. But I'm pretty sure they can all access the Internet without restriction, right? That seems crazy to me.
- Get Little Snitch.
  
  Although yeah it’s wild that’s not built in.
  
  simplewall for Windows
phew it's not unhook
youtube shorts deflector?

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