this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
1518 points (99.4% liked)

Technology

59612 readers
3489 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] VelvetStorm@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Thank you for this info. If this is just an extension, can we just uninstall it or turn it off?

[–] daq@lemmy.sdf.org 16 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This is not a typical extension and it cannot be removed. It doesn't even show up in the list of installed extensions.

[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Maybe recompiling? But I suspect that Chrome as it is, is closed source?

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 6 points 4 months ago

Chromium is open source. Google Chrome is not open source.

[–] ABasilPlant@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] Katana314@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Seems like a great option. Can anyone more familiar with the code confirm this removes the aforementioned CPU-fingerprinting plugin?

[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 months ago

It does. You can even try it out yourself. Install Ungoogled Chromium, go to google.com and paste the following code in the Developer console (which you can bring up by pressing F12 and clicking on 'Console' at the top of the DevTools interface):

    chrome.runtime.sendMessage(
      "nkeimhogjdpnpccoofpliimaahmaaome",
      { method: "cpu.getInfo" },
      (response) => {
        console.log(JSON.stringify(response, null, 2));
      },
    );

If it returns nothing or an error, you're good. If it returns something like this:

{
  "value": {
    "archName": "arm64",
    "features": [],
    "modelName": "Apple M2 Max",
    "numOfProcessors": 12,
    "processors": [
      {
        "usage": {
          "idle": 26890137,
          "kernel": 5271531,
          "total": 42525857,
          "user": 10364189
        }
      }, ...

it means that the hidden extension is present, and *.google.com sites have special access in your browser.