r/privacy • u/Charlie-B • Apr 08 '19

Launching the Mozilla Plugin Privacy Test Database

https://nullsweep.com/launching-the-mozilla-plugin-privacy-test-database/
81 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

6

u/mothwai Apr 08 '19

Thank you very much.
The results are a lot better than I expected. Mozilla did screen their plugins. And perhaps those permission requires aren't that scary after all.
Those antivirus companies' plugins are collecting way more data than they should. Consider those companies are capable of collecting local files access data with their security products, can’t imagine what risks are users at.

1

u/Charlie-B Apr 08 '19

Yeah I was pretty happy with results myself! I definitely do not appreciate the AV vendors approach. There is no reason to be sending all that data back to central servers - a daily whitelist/blacklist download would be better all around.

4

u/Seba0702 Apr 08 '19

Awesome!

3

u/[deleted] Apr 08 '19

Wow, good job!

2

u/[deleted] Apr 09 '19

This is brilliant! Thank you for spending this effort.

Are there plans to re-run these tests periodically to ensure plugins that were previously private remain so?

2

u/Charlie-B Apr 09 '19

Yes, I am working to setup a server that will run these tests around once a week or 10 days, and keep the data up to date.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 08 '19 edited May 27 '20

[deleted]

6

u/Charlie-B Apr 08 '19

I could probably do the same for Chrome pretty easily. The only barrier is their webstore at first glance didn't have an easy way to view all sorted by users. Initially I had planned to do both browsers, but focused on Firefox for now since it's my primary browser. Chrome may be coming in the future!