Extensions Privacy Management and Permission Request

[nanashili]

What are Extension Permissions?

Extension permissions are the privileges an extension has access to. These privileges can be anything from listing source control accounts to being able to do actions with those accounts.

Extension Permissions - General Working

When you first install an extension from the Extension Marketplace, there will be pop-ups asking you for permissions to different functionalities. You will need to approve these permissions to take advantage of those features.

Ideally, extensions need to include the reason as to why they need permission to a particular feature. In a source control extension, it is critical to have access to the source control accounts, since it needs to perform actions for certain users and certain git accounts have access to certain projects. So, depending on the extension, the permissions change.

You can deny some of the permissions and still be able to use a particular extension, but the functionality of the extension may be limited due to this.

How can we check extension permissions?

When you are installing an extension in the editor, the permissions that an extension requires pops up. All the permissions are also mentioned in the extension privacy description, while some permissions are asked when the extension is being used. Sometimes permissions are asked when you need to access the part of an extension that requires some additional permissions.

If you think you have given permission to an extension that you would like to revoke, you can always revoke them from the editor's permission settings.

How would this work?

As mentioned in the permission checking of this issue, some extensions could ask for permissions on installation or only when it's required.

If a user grants access to all the requested permissions required by the extension, it would work normally without fault.

But if user decides to decline access to a certain permission the extension will have to continue without accessing the features the permission grants it to use.

Ideally we could add a just this once option for approval. The just this once option would allow an extension to run with the requested permission only for the session that the editor is being used. Once the user closes the project the permission gets revoked and would be asked again next time the extension needs to access a feature the permission allows.

Future Ideas

In the future we could have something like a Extension Privacy Report that reports how often an extension uses certain permissions in the editor.