An alarming situation has arrived for the Google Chrome users. According to the security experts there are some popular chrome extensions that are doing the job of stealing internet history of their users.
The issue came on light when security team at McAfee discovered that there is total five malicious popular chrome extensions that are actively monitoring the website data in order to make money for the cyber-criminals. When talking about numbers, there are over one million of chrome users whose private browsing history is being spied by the hackers.
Among those extensions, services named as “Netflix Party”, are capable of installing a secret spyware which can then onwards see exactly what websites are being viewed on the PC. The main aim of this illegal activity, is to track users that are going for any e-commerce transactions, let’s say Amazon.
Then the hacker adds code to the web pages that later brings user to another shopping page. And it will appear to the users that the particular e-Commerce company has sent users to the shopping page (which is created by the hackers).
On the Internet, many online retailers who manage their shops for the various kinds of products pay a small fee for bringing users to the checkout page for any specific product and buys the product. These extensions are in big questions that they even not let know people that they are directly or indirectly providing funds to the hackers.
To make the thing even worse, McAfee says that these extensions work as expected means it will not let the people to suspect its working when added to the Google Chrome. Or in other words users after adding these extensions won’t figure out that anything is wrong.
In this whole event it is a matter of worry that the websites data is being monitored. The five malicious extensions include: Netflix Party – 800,000 Downloads. Netflix Party 2 – 300,000 downloads. Flipshope- Price Tracker Extension 80,000• Full Page Screenshot Capture 200,000. AutoBuy Flash Sales 20,000.
If you have installed on your chrome browser, then I will strongly recommend that you remove this extension from your browser. Furthermore, if you want to remove you can do so by:
- Going to the right side of chrome address bar.
- Then search for extension icon.
- Right-click on the icon and select remove from chrome.
