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Comment by justmedep | Hacker News Reader

Browser extension that do that require full access to the contents of the website. That’s why some people decide not to use those extension.

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If I want to use an extension that needs full permissions on sensitive websites, I just download it and install it manually after looking at the source code. I rarely have to update them, and I'm not worried about future injections at that point.

It’s been a while since i mucked around with browser extensions, but i assume they don’t have network access by default. Surely there is an extension with page read access and without network access, no?

Edit: this looks pretty harmless https://github.com/the-code-rider/dark-theme-extension/blob/...

Browser extensions that modify webpages are just javascript code injected in the page; They can definitely access the internet.

I don’t think that’s an accurate description of browser extensions. Content scripts work that way, and many browser extensions include content scripts… but not all browser extensions use content scripts.

Anyway, a quick readthru of the code of the extension i linked shows it does use content scripts, but also it doesn’t do any network access.

Listen to this guy defend trash web browsers to support google! Tell me more about how traditional forums are unacceptable and your daddy with billions for shareholders but not customers has the right idea.

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