{"id":19878,"date":"2017-12-18T14:28:24","date_gmt":"2017-12-18T19:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=19878"},"modified":"2017-12-18T14:28:24","modified_gmt":"2017-12-18T19:28:24","slug":"firefox-pushes-looking-glass-add-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/12\/18\/firefox-pushes-looking-glass-add-on\/","title":{"rendered":"Firefox Pushes Looking Glass Add-on"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/utcc.utoronto.ca\/~cks\/space\/blog\/web\/MozillaSomeQuestions\">Chris Siebenmann<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/utcc.utoronto.ca\/~cks\/space\/blog\/web\/MozillaSomeQuestions\"><p>This [Allow Firefox to install and run studies] preference sounds relatively harmless, and probably it used\nto be.  Then very recently Mozilla pushed out a nominal SHIELD\nexperiment in the form of a new extension called <a href=\"https:\/\/support.mozilla.org\/en-US\/questions\/1194583\">&lsquo;Looking Glass\n1.0.3&rsquo;<\/a>, with\nthe helpful extension description text of &lsquo;MY REALITY IS JUST\nDIFFERENT THAN YOURS&rsquo;. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people who noticed\nthis extension appearing were quite alarmed, because it certainly\ndoes look like malware from surface appearances, and to add to the\nfun there was no particular sign in Firefox of what it did. People\non Reddit who noticed it resorted to reverse engineering the\nextension&rsquo;s code in an attempt to figure things out, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/firefox\/comments\/7jh9rv\/what_is_looking_glass\/dr6fiaz\/\">eg<\/a>.<\/p><p>What this extension actually is is <a href=\"https:\/\/support.mozilla.org\/en-US\/kb\/lookingglass\">some kind of promotion from\nthe Mr Robot TV show<\/a>:<\/p><blockquote><p>[&#8230;] Firefox and Mr Robot have collaborated on a shared experience to\nfurther your immersion into the Mr Robot universe, also known as an\nAlternate Reality Game (ARG). [&#8230;]<\/p><\/blockquote><p>From the outside, this collaboration certainly seems like it was\nactually &lsquo;Mr Robot gave Mozilla a bunch of money and Mozilla abused\nits browser experiments system to inflict a Mr Robot promotional\nextension on people&rsquo;. To make it worse, this is not just any old\nextension; this is an extension that apparently silently alters\ntext on web pages (some text, only for a while).<\/p><\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chris Siebenmann: This [Allow Firefox to install and run studies] preference sounds relatively harmless, and probably it used to be. Then very recently Mozilla pushed out a nominal SHIELD experiment in the form of a new extension called &lsquo;Looking Glass 1.0.3&rsquo;, with the helpful extension description text of &lsquo;MY REALITY IS JUST DIFFERENT THAN YOURS&rsquo;. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[279,30,32,1529,410,96],"class_list":["post-19878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-firefox","tag-mac","tag-macapp","tag-macos-10-13","tag-mozilla","tag-web"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19878"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19878\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19879,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19878\/revisions\/19879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}