Spyware extension to replace a functional extension (sciwheel). This extension tracks all of your web browsing and shares and sells it to data brokers and other companies, including marketing agencies.

"Required permissions:

Access browser tabs
Access browser activity during navigation
Access your data for all websites"

'If the product is free, you are the product'. Wonder why everyone is complaining about the extension slowing down their browser? Maybe because its constantly scraping and recording everything you're doing..

There was a Q/A where they said they tried to put these concerns to rest, but their privacy statement says it all:

When We Share Your Information"
1) As Required by Law:
2) For Your Safety and Protection:

3) With Our Trusted Service Providers: We work with third-party service providers (e.g. cloud hosting, analytics, customer support platforms) who assist us in operating and improving our products. These providers are only allowed to use the information for the specific services we hire them for, act on our instructions, and are bound by strict contractual agreements to protect your data.

---- the wording is interesting here, "The providers are only allowed to use the information for the specific services we hire them for, act on our instructions..." This is intentionally vague and could be used for any reason...

4) In Business Changes: "If Technology from Sage (or a product line like Lean Library or Talis) is involved in a merger, acquisition, or sale of all or a portion of its assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. You will be notified of any such change in ownership or use of your information."

---- As soon as the company changes hands, all your data belongs to someone else and its use has no limitations.

5) With Partners (Anonymised Data Only): We may disclose anonymised and aggregated data (data that cannot be linked back to you personally) with our partners or for marketing purposes. This helps us and our partners understand trends, improve access to academic materials, or enhance products without revealing your identity.

---- 1) True anonymisation is incredibly hard.. They collect device IDs, IP addresses, browsing patters, demographic information, etc., They do not outline how they will anonymize the data. When your name, birthday, or other personal or identifying information is collected, they do not specify how they will ensure *all instances of identifiable information* will be scrubbed before data is shared. Example: if you log in to LinkedIn and click on your profile, the new tab is named your full name and this is collected by them being able to 'Access browser tabs'. 2) They also say that the data, 'cannot be linked back to you personally' (which is false) and it can be linked to your devices which can be linked back to you. A single other dataset and this can be linked to all other existing data on you 3) "FOR MARKETING PURPOSES". This one is self explanatory, monetary incentive. 4) They do not say who the partners are.. could be anyone. Could be tech firms, ad firms, analytic firms 5) Once the data are shared with partners, you cannot have them deleted.

Doesn't seem to find any of the articles on the page. Slows Github and Youtube to an absolute crawl. The extension it replaced, Sciwheel, did one thing and did it very well-- this tries to do more and accomplishes nothing, while slowing down everything else. Really bad start of the rebrand, folks.

Not a great extension, at best it merits 3/5 starts. HOWEVER it slows down every single website, sometimes freezing my entire PC for some absurd reason. I'd rather have a bookmarklet than this.

From reading the developer responses to other reviews, they have been aware of the issues and bloat of the add-on for years yet have not actually fixed these things.

It really feels like they got the product working and now are just cruising doing the bare minimum while reaping whatever money universities pay them.

It's buggy, and it breaks some websites like: search dot nixos dot org

when filling in the university I attend, it does not give any options to proceed. I want to log in with my university information, but except for filling in that I attend it I cannot do anything

This extension breaks my browser and other extensions like Mendeley Web Importer that i need for my scientific papers.

Stuck at loading screen

When it works it's great, but for me as a professor emerita trying to access remote materials is almost impossible. Most of the time my login and password are not accepted. I would appreciate it if it worked, but each time I try to use it, I have to download it again. This is not good tool, if it wastes so much time.

If only it worked properly. Half the times it doesn't want to load and needs me to re-boot it manually. Other times it doesn't let me choose my primary institution by automatically choosing another institution...

The latest update has broken a lot of non-academic websites for me. With this add-on enabled, the website Cryptpad.fr does not work at all anymore, and visual glitches have appeared on other websites including my own personal website. I have tested this in a completely fresh Firefox install: No add-ons, and websites work perfectly, then I install Lean Library, and the websites break.

Please do not add fonts.bunny.net to every website.
A extension which adds a popup does not need to add a font!!!!

Oh, hell no! Let rapacious publishers have access to my browsing history and data for all web sites? Anyone using this would be at great risk of a lawsuit by SAGE if they also use a site such as Sci-Hub.

Absolute rubbish. My university uses this and there's nothing but problems, sluggish connections, redirects not happening properly. Essentially unusable (both this add-on and the shitty university's system). How poor does this have to be before we can report it for abuse?

Works, but makes all pages load significantly slower.

When used as an extension, it increases the RAM usage of firefox 3 to 4 times than without it. My computer starts making loud noises and seems to start struggle.

Please explain why access to information within all windows and tabs are required by this extension.

Unfortunately, this Add-on doesn’t have any iOS browser access. This is rather unfortunate, as most of by journal browsing is done on iOS devices. This renders the new access via Lean Library (versus ezyproxy) rather inadequate for my needs.