LinkedIn Extension Scanning Raises Privacy Concerns; Anthropic Announces Limited Security Model Access

Summary

Security Now examines LinkedIn's browser-extension scanning and device fingerprinting, including its disputed privacy implications, and discusses Anthropic's announcement of limited access to a security-focused AI model.

Key points

• The hosts discuss an investigation reporting that LinkedIn probes for thousands of browser extensions and collects device characteristics. The transcript says Bleeping Computer independently verified the scanning.
• LinkedIn said it looks for extensions that scrape data without consent or violate its terms, and denied using the data to infer sensitive information about members.
• Steve Gibson questioned the collection's scope and proposed browser alerts or user controls for extensive file queries. He presented his explanation of how the fingerprint could be used as speculation.
• The hosts said Firefox may limit, but not necessarily eliminate, LinkedIn's fingerprinting compared with Chromium-based browsers.
• The hosts reported Anthropic's announcement of limited access to Mythos for security work, including the company's claims about vulnerability discovery and exploitation. They noted the potential for misuse.
• Gibson discussed age-verification difficulties reported by Apple users after the 26.4 update and described requesting account information through Apple's privacy portal.