Net Surveillance Web Plugin |link| Access

The keyword "net surveillance" covers three distinct categories:

The landscape of web surveillance has shifted with the retirement of Internet Explorer net surveillance web plugin

Andersen v. Employee Monitoring Corp. (2023) – A California court ruled that an employer violated state privacy law by using a web plugin that activated a laptop’s microphone during off-hours, even though the employee had signed a monitoring agreement. The lesson: Contractual consent does not override reasonable expectation of privacy. The lesson: Contractual consent does not override reasonable

While net surveillance web plugins offer many benefits, there are also implications to consider. Some of the key concerns include: browser vendors (Chrome

But this is a losing battle. The fundamental asymmetry remains: the surveillance plugin needs to succeed only once to exfiltrate your data; you need to succeed every single time to remain private. Moreover, browser vendors (Chrome, Edge) are increasingly shifting to Manifest V3, which deliberately cripples the capabilities of privacy-preserving plugins while leaving commercial surveillance plugins largely untouched.