[jaredsohn]

It doesn't say that. It says it requires access to:

" * Your data on all websites

* Your tabs and browsing history "

The reason for the first is that it needs to be able to modify every page you are looking at to block the ads. The reason for the second is that it needs access to the Tab API (to get the name/URL of a webpage you view, presumably to make use of white/black lists.)

[dredmorbius]

Which is a huge part of what makes various "privacy policy" terms so damned useless.

There is a ton of software on my computer that "has access" to my "data" and "network traffic": the kernel, network stack, clients, filesystem drivers, etc.

What they don't do is go tattling all this crap back to some mothership (or at least they'd better damned well not be).

Where Android / iPhone apps and Chrome extensions start freaking the living crap out of me is where they say they "require" this access ... and I don't (short of setting up some network traffic instrumentation) know off-hand whether this is staying local to the app or getting broadcast to the world. Or some big brotherly subset of the world.

[jaredsohn]

My point is that what the extension requests access to is necessary for it to work, which you were disputing in your earlier message.

Sure you have to trust it, and you are generally right to be paranoid about Chrome extensions, but on the positive side, the extensions are somewhat more limited in the bad things they can do compared to non-sandboxed native desktop apps, and the source code is always available (although at times obfuscated and can be updated automatically) since they are written in JavaScript.

[dredmorbius]

Just FYI, you're confusing me an earlier poster to this thread.

[unimpressive]

Well. You could go ahead and use something like wireshark to monitor what packets are being sent out of your system.

But you really shouldn't have to do that. Nor should anyone else for that matter.

[dredmorbius]

Sure, you can set up wireshark.

Then sort out which of the traffic is germane and which is not. This isn't trivial even for a technical person, let alone the lay public.

[unimpressive]

Well yes. That was exactly my point. Nobody should have to do that. On the tail end just because it's unnecessary tedium. On the fat end because it's hard to do.

[dredmorbius]

Violent agreement.