How Browser Extensions Devoured Browser Histories of 4M People

We use the Internet for many things, like buying stuff, setting up appointments, submitting our documents, and accessing different networks. Every time we go to a page, we trust that that page will remain private, and that our information will be safe. But is our information really safe?

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DataSpii, a newly documented privacy issue in which millions of people’s browsing histories have been collected and exposed, shows just how much about us is revealed when that assumption is turned on its head.

DataSpii begins with browser extensions—available mostly for Chrome but in more limited cases for Firefox as well—that, by Google’s account, had as many as 4.1 million users. These extensions collected the URLs, webpage titles, and in some cases the embedded hyperlinks of every page that the browser user visited. Most of these collected Web histories were then published by a fee-based service called Nacho Analytics, which markets itself as “God mode for the Internet” and uses the tag line “See Anyone’s Analytics Account.”

How did these guys obtain the information? Find out over at Ars Technica.

(Image Credit: Tobias_ET/ Pixabay)

Source: neatorama

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