Reviews for Substital
Substital by Gaëtan Covelli
Response by Gaëtan Covelli
Developer response
posted 3 years agoHi! We understand your concern, and it's a very valid one. Unfortunately we need these permissions for Substital to work properly. But as we move to Manifest V3, we would like to find ways to not need these permissions anymore. Moreover, as I said in other replies, a lot of popular browser extensions are also using the same permission as Substital:
AdBlocker Ultimate: Access your data for all websites
Grammarly: Access your data for all websites
LastPass Password Manager: Access your data for all websites
uBlock Origin: Access your data for all websites
To be noted: those extensions even require a lot more permissions than Substital for example. Some extensions can be complex and unfortunately those permissions are required.
To clarify, we inject Substital (elements in the page to detect the videos, to choose and load subtitles, to modify subtitles settings etc.) only when the user interacts with the Substital extension icon on the top right of the browser, unlike other extensions where scripts are automatically injected in the pages without any user interaction, or without the user even knowing. This is what we meant by "Substital is passive by default...".
As for the notes about the monitoring by Mozilla; for each new update, it is required for us to provide and upload the entire source code. The Mozilla team has always access to the entire source code of the extension. The source must be clear, readable, and nothing must be minified or hidden. And they DO monitor it, as we sometimes have to fix some issues they find.
There's absolutely no way to hide anything in the extension from the Mozilla team. The way the process works is that they build the extension on their side using the entire source code we provided to them, and they compare it with the packaged extension we submitted to the store. If it differs even by a tiny bit, they would reach out to us.
I hope I answered your interrogation. And happy to answer any question you may have :)
AdBlocker Ultimate: Access your data for all websites
Grammarly: Access your data for all websites
LastPass Password Manager: Access your data for all websites
uBlock Origin: Access your data for all websites
To be noted: those extensions even require a lot more permissions than Substital for example. Some extensions can be complex and unfortunately those permissions are required.
To clarify, we inject Substital (elements in the page to detect the videos, to choose and load subtitles, to modify subtitles settings etc.) only when the user interacts with the Substital extension icon on the top right of the browser, unlike other extensions where scripts are automatically injected in the pages without any user interaction, or without the user even knowing. This is what we meant by "Substital is passive by default...".
As for the notes about the monitoring by Mozilla; for each new update, it is required for us to provide and upload the entire source code. The Mozilla team has always access to the entire source code of the extension. The source must be clear, readable, and nothing must be minified or hidden. And they DO monitor it, as we sometimes have to fix some issues they find.
There's absolutely no way to hide anything in the extension from the Mozilla team. The way the process works is that they build the extension on their side using the entire source code we provided to them, and they compare it with the packaged extension we submitted to the store. If it differs even by a tiny bit, they would reach out to us.
I hope I answered your interrogation. And happy to answer any question you may have :)