Easy when you Know How
Test the safety of extensions
Worried that something nasty might be lurking in his web browser, Robert Irvine tries to…
In the classic film Invasion of the Body Snatchers (either the 1956 or 1978 version – they’re both good), aliens infiltrate society by replacing human beings with sinister clones. Which is not dissimilar to the way malicious browser extensions are masquerading as legitimate tools, so they can steal users’ data and infect their PCs.
Was my browser harbouring malicious add-ons that secretly collect my data?
Barely a week goes by without new reports of dodgy Chrome extensions somehow evading Google’s ‘strict’ security checks and threatening millions of users. Some of these nasty add-ons pretend to be popular tools such as VPNs, AI assistants and video downloaders (see www.snipca.com/55132). Others are maliciously modified versions of existing extensions that have been sold or abandoned by the original developers.