Certain browser add-ons may be collecting your personal information
Extensions available for Google Chrome, those small add-ons designed to make the browser more useful however, pose dangerous for security according to new research.
This week, the the data protection firm Incogni released a new report based upon an analysis of 1 237 Google Chrome extensions available for download from the Chrome Web Store.
The report states that more than 50% of extensions that were analyzed (48.66 percent) have a extremely or very high-risk impacts that is, they’re extremely likely to store personal, sensitive information.
Extensions that consume a lot of data
More than 25% from these extensions (27 27.7%) collect information, which appears to be the primary problem for Incogni.
Of all the extensions available to download, writing extensions like Grammarly are regarded to be to be the most data-hungry. 79.5 percent of them collect at the very least one data points. In addition, these types of extensions have the highest kinds of data (2.5 types of data) The report suggests.
In addition, Incogni views extension writing as the most dangerous of the bunchbecause they’re the ones asking the most permissions. This is why they have one of the top score for risk impact, 3.7/5.
Apart from writing extensions, those within the shopping category were also found to be equally worrying in that nearly two-thirds (64.9 percent) gather user data. With an average risk-impact score of 3.9/5 that is the most dangerous ones.
Because certain extensions will not function correctly if they don’t have the proper permissions (including ones that Incogni refers to as “scary” like reading data from the clipboard or browsing) It is crucial to select extensions from trustworthy developers.
“A reliable developer is one who has an unbroken record of flawless software development as well as high ratings from customers,” the researchers said.
In all cases, users need to be on guard, because an individual developer could turn out to be a negative, while ratings and reviews could be purchased or altered by bots.
