Profile picture of Stephane Hamel
Stephane Hamel
Digital marketing & analytics shaped by data governance, privacy and ethics | Educator · Speaker · Consultant
Follow me
Generated by linktime
May 6, 2024
Wow! LinkedIn just reminded me I've been 20 years on LinkedIn! 🎉 Instead of taking the default stats provided by LinkedIn, here are some of my own highlights of those 20 years: 🥳 • I worked for BRP (power sports/manufacturing), Nurun (agency), Desjardins Insurance, Merkle | Cardinal Path (agency), and was a freelancer for many years. Working on my own and for agencies brought me an amazing level of experience and expertise; • I relocated 7 times (purchasing houses as investments) and landed in Canmore, Alberta, Canada; • I taught at The University of British Columbia, Simplilearn and I continue to teach at Université Laval and recently added the Haskayne School of Business - and was invited as a guest speaker at numerous universities, including UQAM, UMontreal, YorkU, SUNY, and Harvard; • I spoke at over 150 events in Canada, Europe and the United States; • I created WASP (sold to Cardinal Path), gaAddons, Da Vinci Tools (sold to Supermetrics), and the Digital Analytics Maturity Model; • I have contributed to communities on Yahoo!, G+, Medium, Facebook and Slack; • and lastly, I have invested and shared my insights with privacytech startups. 📈 My reach is now over 12,500 people on LinkedIn - including marketing, analytics, legal professionals, managers, founders; and nearly 4,000 newsletter subscribers; 📈 Twenty years ago I launched my blog (still there at https://lnkd.in/gNdQSBeG) Since then, I published over a thousand articles on Medium (https://lnkd.in/gr9bdTjn) and here on LinkedIn; 📈 My posts and articles have been viewed nearly a million times over the past year alone. Thank you for being a part of my journey!
Stay updated
Subscribe to receive my future LinkedIn posts in your mailbox.

By clicking "Subscribe", you agree to receive emails from linktime.co.
You can unsubscribe at any time.

May 6, 2024
DID YOU KNOW? LinkedIn is spying on your browser extensions! While working on my own browser extension, I discovered that LinkedIn is actively scanning for other installed extensions. There’s code embedded in their site that loops through over 1,800 extension IDs, attempting to retrieve specific files from each extension’s package. If successful, LinkedIn knows exactly which extensions you’re using - especially those that might scrape content, automate actions, or modify their interface. This isn’t new. LinkedIn was first caught doing this over eight years ago, when they were scanning for just 38 extensions. That number has now ballooned to 1,800+! While some of these are clearly automation bots used for spam (no sympathy there), others are legitimate productivity tools. Why does this matter? This technique can be used by ANY website to detect extensions you’ve installed. It’s a powerful method for fingerprinting users - tracking them even when cookies and other identifiers are blocked. Privacy concerns. Since LinkedIn is probing elements installed on your device, doesn’t this fall under the ePrivacy Directive? There’s no mention of this practice in their privacy policy - nor any transparency about how they use this data. Is this a privacy violation? Should platforms be required to disclose this kind of tracking? Curious to hear your thoughts. #Privacy #LinkedIn #BrowserExtensions #Fingerprinting #CyberSecurity
74 comments
February 17, 2025