390371 - suspicious extension: "Oblinq". Does -nothing- on thunderbird, strange history

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Administration, defect)

Description

[dreadnaut]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; it; rv:1.8.1.5) Gecko/20070713 Firefox/2.0.0.5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; it; rv:1.8.1.5) Gecko/20070713 Firefox/2.0.0.5

This extension caught my eye tonight on the "newly published" feed. I installed it on Thunderbird, and it does nothing.  The overlay file specifies a menu entry, and nothing else, that should show a popup - but javascript seems obfuscated.  Developer signed up on the 29th, extension approved on the 30th, on the 31th two new users (both registered on the 31th) add to very similar comments; in short: "we have been using this extension for a long time, it works really well, you can make money out of it". I haven't tried the relative online service, but this extension smells a bit spammy... it may work on Firefox, but why file it also for Thunderbird?  what about those comments?  didn't it go through the sandbox?

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
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Comment 1

[Oliver Saier]

Unless I missed something, it clearly won't work in Thunderbird.
Firstly, according to the contents.rdf, only chrome://browser/content/browser.xul and chrome://navigator/content/navigator.xul are overlayed.
Secondly, they're using window.open() and afaik that won't open anything anywhere from Thunderbird.

Also, they used weird variable names but nothing looks particularly "suspicious" to me. We could require a privacy policy but it's on their website already, and it seems you must create an account to use the service so you have all the opportunity to read the policy and some ToS and accept them.

As for both reviews they indeed may sound like shill reviews =)

Comment 2

[dreadnaut]

I think it's better if I specify my use of "suspicious". I don't really think there is anything such a malware in the extension - people would find out in 3 minutes.

I saw it appear in both the Firefox and Thunderbird lists, it's even among the Seamonkey pages, it has fake-looking reviews, and in the end it does... nothing. Even on Firefox, a menu entry.  Is this really an extension?  or is it just anew form of spam?

Comment 3

[Oliver Saier]

Also it won't install on Linux because the chrome folder was named Chrome instead of chrome. I'll try to contact them before an admin considers moving it back to sandbox.
Thanks for the infos Fransesco!

Comment 4

[dreadnaut]

glad to help.  Thank you for your work!

Comment 5

[RP]

hi all, 
I am the developer of OblinQ.
Thanks for the comments and sorry if this caused concern in the community. I respect the value you guys bring.
Also thank you Oliver for contacting me to give me a chance.

Please be assured that this is no spam. I will remove the thunderbird/Linux compatibility until I make some changes to make it work on those platforms. It's a bug in the release that was posted to addons.mozilla.org

Oblinq is fairly straight forward bookmarking addon/service. It gives you a right-click menu "Add to OblinQ" to bring anything you see on a web into your personal store at Oblinq.com. The difference is that I have built in affiliate revenue sharing implemented at OblinQ.com which gives users a store that is ready to earn them money, if they are interested. I personally use it. Friends loved it and so I thought of putting up a decent website and create this add-on.


I hope you do not remove the add-on because I really value the exposure it has given to what I am up to. 

To asure that all this is legit, I have given out my address/phone/contact links..everything I could reasonably do at my website.

If you all think this is ok, can you put relevant reviews for the add-on after trying it on firefox.

thank you

Rahul

Comment 6

[Fred Wenzel [:wenzel]]

The dev removed the Thunderbird compatibility as he said and the version was (apparently) approved public by the reviewers. Marking this fixed for now.