Disable the ability of ordinary user to Uninstall / Remove Chrome extension.

[uniavatar]

Hi guys,

I was looking into the Chrome Extensions API and I have the following
question:

Is there a way to disable the ability of ordinary user to Uninstall /
Remove specific Chrome extension?
There are many use cases when this is needed, such as when you want to
install an extension and don't want your child to Disable it.

I am wondering whether the Chrome API allows us to do that, or whether
we can do that using NPAPI.

Looking forward to hear your thoughts on this.

Sincerely,

David

[Daniel Wagner-Hall]

Sounds like you need
https://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/trunk/external_extensions.html

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Chromium-extensions" group.
> To post to this group, send email to chromium-...@chromium.org.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to chromium-extens...@chromium.org.
> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/group/chromium-extensions/?hl=en.
>
>

[Finnur Thorarinsson]

No, this won't do what you want. There is no mechanism in Chrome to prevent someone from uninstalling an extension.

[Pam Greene]

If you lock the extension's directory or files in the OS, will that prevent Chrome from uninstalling it? I haven't tried, and it might vary by OS. Preventing disabling that way seems less plausible, though.

- Pam

[uniavatar]

Guys, thanks for your feedback.

Locking the extension's directory might be a solution, I will need to
digg more into that in order
to give a complete answer whether it will work or no.

Sincerely,

David

On Mar 7, 7:17 am, Pam Greene <p...@chromium.org> wrote:
> If you lock the extension's directory or files in the OS, will that prevent
> Chrome from uninstalling it? I haven't tried, and it might vary by OS.
> Preventing disabling that way seems less plausible, though.
>
> - Pam
>
> On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 4:19 PM, Finnur Thorarinsson <fin...@chromium.org>wrote:
>
>
>
> > No, this won't do what you want. There is no mechanism in Chrome to prevent
> > someone from uninstalling an extension.
>

> > On Sat, Mar 6, 2010 at 16:15, Daniel Wagner-Hall <dawag...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
> >> Sounds like you need
> >>https://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/trunk/external_extensions.html
>

> >> On 3 March 2010 06:39, uniavatar <david...@googlemail.com> wrote:
> >> > Hi guys,
>
> >> > I was looking into the Chrome Extensions API and I have the following
> >> > question:
>
> >> > Is there a way to disable the ability of ordinary user to Uninstall /
> >> > Remove specific Chrome extension?
> >> > There are many use cases when this is needed, such as when you want to
> >> > install an extension and don't want your child to Disable it.
>
> >> > I am wondering whether the Chrome API allows us to do that, or whether
> >> > we can do that using NPAPI.
>
> >> > Looking forward to hear your thoughts on this.
>
> >> > Sincerely,
>
> >> > David
>
> >> > --
> >> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> >> Groups "Chromium-extensions" group.

> >> > To post to this group, send email to chromium-extensi...@chromium.org.

> >> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to

> >> chromium-extensions+unsubscr...@chromium.org<chromium-extensions%2Bunsubscr...@chromium.org>

> >> .
> >> > For more options, visit this group at
> >>http://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/group/chromium-extensions/?hl=en.
>
> >> --
> >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> >> "Chromium-extensions" group.

> >> To post to this group, send email to chromium-extensi...@chromium.org.

> >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to

> >> chromium-extensions+unsubscr...@chromium.org<chromium-extensions%2Bunsubscr...@chromium.org>

> >> .
> >> For more options, visit this group at
> >>http://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/group/chromium-extensions/?hl=en.
>
> >  --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> > "Chromium-extensions" group.

> > To post to this group, send email to chromium-extensi...@chromium.org.

> > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to

> > chromium-extensions+unsubscr...@chromium.org<chromium-extensions%2Bunsubscr...@chromium.org>

[PhistucK]

I am not sure that will work - you cannot lock the Preferences file, which holds the information regarding the active extensions. Once the user gets into chrome://extensions and disables or uninstalls the extension, there might be an error, but the extension will no longer work - I think.

☆PhistucK

To post to this group, send email to chromium-...@chromium.org.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to chromium-extens...@chromium.org.

[Finnur Thorarinsson]

Yeah, I'm skeptical too that this will work well (and not cause weird side-effects). One other thing to keep in mind is that when the extension gets auto-updated the new version will be in a new directory, so you'd have to constantly be on the lookout for new directories to lock.

[Erik Kay]

As Finnur and PhistucK said, this won't work.  I don't think there's a nice way to do this today.

Could you give us an idea of the use case you're trying to address here?  Enterprise?  Kiosk?

Erik

To post to this group, send email to chromium-...@chromium.org.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to chromium-extens...@chromium.org.

[uniavatar]

Hi Erik,

This is more of a Kiosk and we need to prevent children the ability to
Disable / Uninstall the add-on.

Sincerely,

David

> > <chromium-extensions%2Bunsubscr...@chromium.org<chromium-extensions%252Bunsubscr...@chromium.org>

>
> > > >> .
> > > >> > For more options, visit this group at
>
> >http://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/group/chromium-extensions/?hl=en.
>
> > > >> --
> > > >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> > Groups
> > > >> "Chromium-extensions" group.
> > > >> To post to this group, send email to chromium-extensi...@chromium.org
> > .
> > > >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> > > >> chromium-extensions+unsubscr...@chromium.org<chromium-extensions%2Bunsubscr...@chromium.org>

> > <chromium-extensions%2Bunsubscr...@chromium.org<chromium-extensions%252Bunsubscr...@chromium.org>

>
> > > >> .
> > > >> For more options, visit this group at
>
> >http://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/group/chromium-extensions/?hl=en.
>
> > > >  --
> > > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> > Groups
> > > > "Chromium-extensions" group.
> > > > To post to this group, send email to chromium-extensi...@chromium.org.
> > > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
> > > > chromium-extensions+unsubscr...@chromium.org<chromium-extensions%2Bunsubscr...@chromium.org>

> > <chromium-extensions%2Bunsubscr...@chromium.org<chromium-extensions%252Bunsubscr...@chromium.org>

[Erik Kay]

It sounds like we should disable access to chrome://extensions in kiosk mode.  Maybe also prevent them from being installed.

Could you please file a bug at crbug.com/new for this?

thanks,

Erik

To post to this group, send email to chromium-...@chromium.org.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to chromium-extens...@chromium.org.

[Yoann Jolivet]

Is there a way now to disable access to chrome:\\extensions ?

The only good way to protect our children from adult things on the internet is Extensions but they are so much easy to disable...

Sounds like nobody wonders about children.... 

[Shamsher Singh]

[Josh Adams]

Dark forces at work!

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Chromium-Extensions-Announce" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to chromium-extensions+unsub...@chromium.org.
To post to this group, send email to chromium-extensions@chromium.org.
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/group/chromium-extensions/.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/chromium-extensions/d8c84b13-5705-4dff-9e24-fc265684d687%40chromium.org.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/optout.