All Chromium browsers including Brave give special access to system/tab CPU/GPU only for Google domains

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3

Brave lets you disable this in its extensions settings, with this toggle.

brave-hangouts
brave-hangouts700×665 37.6 KB

Always wondered what it did. Glad I always disabled it.

Running this code in the dev console lets you test the API (from a comment on the HN discussion):

chrome.runtime.sendMessage(
    'nkeimhogjdpnpccoofpliimaahmaaome', {
        method: 'cpu.getInfo'
    }, response => {
        console.log('CPU Info:\n', JSON.stringify(response, null, 2));
    }
);

I tested this with the Hangouts extension on and off, and confirmed google sites can get the special info when it’s turned on, and not when turned off.

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