Google Warned About These Popular Extensions that Collect Your Data
Google warned its users about a number of popular extensions on Chrome web store that are accused of collecting sensitive user data. These Popular extensions that Collect your data is an alarming news. An analyst described Google Chrome Data Collection as a huge spyware campaign. This spyware was discovered by Andrey Meshkov, Co-founder of Adguard who told that the data collection geta started when a victim is logged into their Facebook account.
Here is the List of Popular Extensions that Collect Your Data
The irritating Chrome extensions, downloaded hundreds of times starts collecting data immediately after the browser starts up. The data which is actually targeted includes posts, sponsored posts, tweets, YouTube videos and other adverts which a victim has seen.
This data is collected and sent to third party firm named Unimania which later on sells into other parties for revenue generation.
Regarding these findings, Meshkov said:
“The story begins with the recent research I conducted about fake ad blockers in the Chrome Web Store. The outcome of that research was that I received dozens of questions about whether this or that extension is safe to use”
Adguard revealed that there were four Chrome extensions that collected user data and shared it with third party advertiser. The extensions were used by around 420,000 Google chrome users.
Among these extensions, the most popular was “video downloader for Facebook” which was downloaded by more than 170,000 users.
Popular Extensions that Collect Your Data
Here are the four Google Chrome extensions Adguard highlighted:
- Video Downloader For Facebook (More than 170,000 users)
- PDF Merge – PDF Files Merger (More than 92,000 users)
- Album & Photo Manager For Facebook (More than 125,000 users)
- Pixcam – Webcam Effects (31,000 users)
Beware of these above-mentioned extensions!
Also Read: Offline Gmail is Now Available on the web- But Only For Chrome
