Hey Taint, the reason I can't let it go is because they never did post any kind of disclosure that they were doing it in the first place, or who all had access to the data being mined or anything else about it at all. It was just "oh let's forget about it". The fact is, the code was sending unencrypted account details to a Stanford server that no one ever answered WHO had access to, and it continued to be sent unencrypted into the ether even after they shut down the project. I'm not sure when the code was finally removed that tried contacting the Stanford server but I'm guessing that it has only been recently (the data was still being sent even though it was no longer getting collected by the server, my guess is that's why TO was so slow). Anyway, I have made it a point to say that TO has been useful and full of potential. I even gave them a few kind-ish words on a different forum and this one. I'm just not sure that a group of academics crunching cloud workers numbers for a living can be trusted to be looking out for "us"...That's why I'm glad other people are involved in it now (even you ) so that when something questionable happens it can be looked into. For Pete's sake, Lilly herself commented at TN that she deleted her FB account for the very same security concerns if that tells you anything... The jist of my lasting anger is that it is very important for people to know that installing any extension is giving that extension's code the same permissions that your browser has to your data. With something as fickle as Mturk, even the smallest data nugget in the wrong hands could easily result in someone using it to trigger an account suspension at the very least. TO refuses to acknowledge any of this by hosting any sort of agreement or software disclaimer and therefore I feel obligated to inform peeps of the dangers of installing scripts and extensions that they have no real clue on what they do.
I feel ya' CC. It is a leap of faith to run a script, and seeing that "transferring data to stanford..." flash creeped me out, too. That said, my spidey sense puts my comfort level with TO very high, personally. It's google and Facbook that make me want to pull out my tinfoil hat. lol.