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(CS Undergrad) Hello! Since the hiring season is beginning, I thought I should create some side projects to put on my resume. Therefore, I created a couple of chrome extensions. But here's the problem: both of my chrome extensions are regarding paywall removal on certain sites. They use sophisticated methods of extracting information and then parse on the web page, allowing the user to access the paid material for free.

Since both of my projects are about getting around paywalls, is it a wise idea to put them on my resume?

Thanks

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    Since both of my projects are about getting around paywalls, is it a wise idea to put them on my resume? - No. – joeqwerty Aug 4 '20 at 14:34
  • @gnat, poor choice. workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/97610/… – Old_Lamplighter Aug 4 '20 at 15:03
  • All I did was found a few security loopholes and used those to develop the code. Can I probably list them as security research projects? I have also notified the engineering teams of the sites regarding the issue. – Syed Husain Aug 4 '20 at 15:59
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Depends on your audience.

The Hacker News/startup crowd would be perfectly fine with this type of side project. Plenty such projects rocket to the top of that particular forum and many idols of that community did similar things. A lot of it might depend on who was losing their paywalls, but as a general rule one of the most upvoted comments about any news article is the archive link or a comment about a CSS rule to break the paywall. I would have little hesitation putting it on my resume for a startup.

Web scraping companies would likewise be fine with this as a lot of their work is breaking defense mechanisms like this.

You go to more corporate environments like banks and many of them would view this as hacking, but a lot of it would probably come down to how old the person was. Over 35 and you are used to paying for news. Under 35 and free news was something you once had that was later taken away.

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  • On one hand, I agree with the first comment. On the other hand, the HN crowd's attitudes tend to lean very much towards corporatism, and even if they personally would be fine (or even use) the extensions, it's likely that the application would be crushed. Security people often see themselves as an extension of law enforcement in corps, and there is a distinct possibility that circumventing things at home will lead to circumventing things at work. Best to leave them off. – Malisbad Aug 4 '20 at 23:56

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