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Cake day: June 20th, 2025

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  • I think there might be a bit of misunderstanding about what those permissions mean. The extensions just need to be able to “see” the contents of a web page in order to be able to hide ads, change font & background colors, edit URLs, or redirect resource requests. There is no other way for them to perform those functions unless they have permission to read the original data presented by websites you visit.




  • Answer by @listless@lemmy.cringecollective.io

    Web pages are not allowed to list your extensions. They can indirectly surmise you have certain extensions based on how your requests differ from expectations. For example, if they have advertisements, but your browser never actually makes any requests to load the images, CSS, JS or HTML for the advertisements, they can deduce you have an ad-blocker. That’s a datapoint they now have to ID you: “has an ad-blocker”

    Now let’s say they have an ad they know AdBlockPlus allows, but uBlock Origin doesn’t. They see your browser doesn’t load that ad. Another datapoint: “Not using AdBlockPlus”.

    Based on what requests go back and forth between your browser and their servers, they map out a unique fingerprint.


  • Web pages are not allowed to list your extensions. They can indirectly surmise you have certain extensions based on how your requests differ from expectations. For example, if they have advertisements, but your browser never actually makes any requests to load the images, CSS, JS or HTML for the advertisements, they can deduce you have an ad-blocker. That’s a datapoint they now have to ID you: “has an ad-blocker”

    Now let’s say they have an ad they know AdBlockPlus allows, but uBlock Origin doesn’t. They see your browser doesn’t load that ad. Another datapoint: “Not using AdBlockPlus”.

    Based on what requests go back and forth between your browser and their servers, they map out a unique fingerprint.

    Thank you so much that makes sense