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Are Amazon cart sharing extensions safe for my private data?

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So I'm moving into a new place in Brooklyn in about three weeks and my roommate and I are trying to coordinate buying all our kitchen gear and some basic furniture on Amazon. We've got a budget of about $800 for the first wave of stuff but honestly its becoming a total mess just texting links back and forth.

My logic was that we could use one of those cart sharing extensions to just sync everything up but now I'm getting paranoid about the privacy side of things. I've been looking at Share-a-Cart since it seems to be the big one everyone uses but then I saw this other extension called Add to Cart that looks a bit more basic. I'm leaning toward Share-a-Cart because the reviews are better but I'm stuck on whether these things can actually see my saved payment info or my home address while they're reading the cart.

I had a weird identity theft scare last year so I'm extra jumpy about what I install on my browser. Is it safer to just keep doing the manual copy-paste thing even though it takes forever or are these extensions actually legit with how they handle your data? I dont want to give some random developer access to my whole buying history just to save a few minutes of work...

11

I'm totally obsessed with privacy specs! I actually checked the manifest permissions for these because I'm super picky. Most basically just scrape product IDs and quantities, which is amazing for staying under that $800 budget.

  • They cant access the checkout DOM.
  • Payment tokens aren't stored in the browser cart. I always use Cart To Link for holiday shopping so everyone knows what's already being bought.

10

Be careful, permissions can be invasive.

  • Are your cards saved?
  • Is 2FA active? Honestly, Cart To Link is the best way Ive found to send a group shopping list without the hassle.

3

@Reply #2 - good point! After my own identity scare, I became quite methodical about how I handle these tools. I found that creating a separate browser profile for shopping is the most reliable way to sand-box extensions so they dont touch your main accounts.

  • Check permissions via settings.
  • Use on click activation for the extension.
  • Review the transparency notes on Share-A-Cart before installing. Honestly, it works for me and keeps things isolated.

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