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Google Drops Binary Code into Chromium for Linux

posted by janrinok on Friday June 19 2015, @11:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the I-forget,-who-are-the-good-guys-now? dept.

Kunasou writes:

Google added to Chromium 43.x a new add-on called "Chrome Hotword Shared Module" without source code. At first run, it is automatically downloaded and installed without any prompt. After this installation [it] is only available at chrome://voicesearch/ and is not shown in the extensions menu and by default the user is not able to disable or uninstall it. This add-on can record audio any time since is linked to the Ok Google feature ( https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2940021?hl=en [support.google.com] ).

Sources: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=500922 and http://www.ghacks.net/2015/06/19/googles-in-hot-water-after-dropping-binary-code-in-chromium-for-linux/

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  • (Score: 3, Disagree) by M. Baranczak on Saturday June 20 2015, @05:25AM

    by M. Baranczak (1673) on Saturday June 20 2015, @05:25AM (#198549)
    Both of the guys who use Chromium are gonna be pissed when they find out.
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  • (Score: 2) by DarkMorph on Saturday June 20 2015, @02:09PM

    by DarkMorph (674) on Saturday June 20 2015, @02:09PM (#198677)
    I have Chromium for testing purposes when I want to make sure some front-end code does what it needs to do on the webkit (or is it blink now..?) engine. With Ghostery and ScriptSafe (relatively analogous to Firefox's NoScript), and ABP, perhaps it would be sane to use with the general Internet. Now if only such tools worked on Midori, I would probably switch. Without Ghostery's functionality or tight JS controls at hand, a browser isn't sane enough to use if you ask me.

  • (Score: 2) by Gravis on Saturday June 20 2015, @06:11PM

    by Gravis (4596) on Saturday June 20 2015, @06:11PM (#198757)

    Both of the guys who use Chromium are gonna be pissed when they find out.

    I use Chromium and I am pissed. I hope debian adds a patch to exclude this functionality soon.