Every time you open LinkedIn in a Chrome-based browser, hidden JavaScript silently scans your computer for installed software without your knowledge, without your consent, and without a single word in LinkedIn’s privacy policy.
A revealing investigation conducted by the European advocacy group Fairlinked e.V., under the campaign name “BrowserGate,” has uncovered what researchers describe as one of the largest corporate espionage and data breach scandals in digital history.
Microsoft’s LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional networking platform with over one billion users, is running covert code that probes visitors’ browsers for thousands of installed extensions, compiles the results, encrypts them, and transmits everything back to LinkedIn’s servers and to third-party companies.