browser extensions installed "accidentally" by clicking on Facebook fake links ("pink Facebook" / "old profile instead of history"), here are a few basics on how something like this works. To all the experts out there: "Please don't scream if some things are explained in very simplified terms - we're not trying to write a specialist article here, but rather to show how something like this works with very simple explanations."

The browser

What exactly is a browser?
Everyone uses it – Firefox , Google Chrome , Internet Explorer or Opera (just to take the most popular ones) – but what is it actually?

First of all – the browser is not the Internet. It's basically our window into the Internet . the “ URL line” to tell him where (on which server) he should “look” for something. The browser then queries the page from there and basically gets a LOT of text – numbers and letters.

Let’s take the ZDDK article as an example

https://www.mimikama.org/general/zddk-tipp-facebook-chronik-deaktivieren/

– It looks like this in the browser:

The browser gets something like this

and translates that for us into something that the human eye can also understand.

A website

In this large amount of text (it is called "source text"), for each image there is information about exactly where on the screen it should be visible, how big it should be, what color the fonts should be, what the fonts should look like (size , style, color, etc), which text goes where, etc. pp, which links are available - everything you see on the page...

If someone is building their own small homepage with 3 or 4 pages in total, it is still quite easy if you want to make all the pages look the same.

But if you take Facebook, where every user has their own page, it becomes more difficult - above all, there is an incredible amount of source code that is the same everywhere and is repeated again and again on every page.

Source code example for the Facebook homepage:

To simplify this, a kind of "construction manual" been developed in which you specify how large images are, where you can see them, what color user names are, what the header of each page looks like, etc.

So our browser loads a website and is the first to find a clue as to where the building instructions are. He also reads these and then puts together the much shorter text into a Facebook page for us.

• Header – always Facebook Blue
• Profile picture – always at the top left in the timeline
• Various data is built into certain fields at such and such a position
• Postings – chronologically one below the other,
• once to the right and once to the left of center
• The chronicle is finished

The advantage of this “ construction instructions method ” is that as a site operator you can change the appearance of a page very easily – simply change the construction instructions – done.
(And don't rewrite every single page.) And above all, he has to send a lot less data around.

But how does my Facebook turn pink and what does that have to do with browser extensions...

So we've already learned that whoever owns the page (Facebook) decides what it looks like by writing the instructions... And everyone can now certainly agree that Mr. Zuckerberg doesn't write new pages for every single user think…

But what happens now if the brower uses a different construction manual?

If I take one in which a different color is used everywhere instead of "Facebook blue" - e.g. "shrill pink", the browser shows my Facebook in flashy pink - even though what Facebook "delivers" is still blue.

This is exactly how it works with the “old profile” – different construction instructions are used.

There are small programs (“extensions”) that install these building instructions in the browser.
All those who have clicked on the " Pink Facebook" or the " old Chronicle " can easily check it with another browser and be amazed: Facebook is and remains blue and Chronicle is and remains Chronicle! – Because only you can see these things if the browser you are using uses such modified building instructions. NO ONE who does not use these building instructions will see any changes.

I don't care, the main thing is that I have it the way I want

If we now imagine that a different assembly manual is used, then we already see a problem - how do I know that the browser uses everything that comes to it - and simply doesn't use certain things when "assembling" it? Or used incorrectly? Right – not at all.

In the best case, only functions are missing - in the worst case, the site doesn't work at all...
And how do I know that my construction instructions don't contain something that doesn't actually belong there? E.g. "Write down everything the user enters on his keyboard and send this data here and there at 10:31 p.m." And the login details for your FB account or your online banking are in the hands of someone who is not allowed to have them...

If I want to be sure that, for example, no one is reading my data, but I absolutely want my FB to be pink (black, green, etc.), then I have to be sure that this extension does not contain anything evil - and can do that It's only me if I install them from official sites - and these are the sites of the browser manufacturers themselves...
For example, if I go to the extensions in Firefox, I can search for "application options" there - and then end up on the official Mozilla browser extensions -Page …

Summary:

1. Nobody can change a website except the person who puts it on the Internet
2. However, my browser can change the way it displays a web page BUT a modified web page may not have all the functions of the original page
3. You only download extensions from the official browser manufacturer websites , as you can be sure that you won't get any crap...

A big thank you to Anja, who provided us with this article 🙂