microsoft edge extensions injecting ads into

He continued, “The business model of the buyer is simple – they buy popular add-ons, inject affiliate links and the bulk of users would never notice this since the Chrome browser automatically updates add-ons in the background. “These aren’t regular banner ads that you see on web pages, these are invisible ads that work the background and replace links on every website that you visit into affiliate links.” Instead, they incorporated advertising into the extension,” Agarwal said. ‘A bad decision’Īdd To Feedly‘s developer Amit Agarwal said in a recent blog post that selling his extension was “a bad decision.”Ī month after making the four-figure sale, the new owner pushed an update to the Chrome store that “didn’t bring any new features to the table nor contained any bug fixes. In contrast, Firefox allows users of its add-ons to choose between manually checking for updates or having them installed automatically. The move by Google over the weekend to remove the software from its store has shone a light on the practice of buying and selling extensions and their related data, and is a reminder of how Chrome extensions are automatically updated in the background without the user knowing.

The Journal said that the new code, which injected ads onto pages where they wouldn’t usually appear, was introduced to the two extensions after the owners sold their work on to other developers who then introduced the monetization features to the software.Īfter the extensions started to serve up unwanted ads, their five-star ratings in the Chrome store quickly dropped to just one, with many users jumping onto message boards to air their grievances. Weeks after changing its terms of service in an effort to force Chrome extension developers to keep their software “simple and single-purpose in nature”, Google has kicked out two from its Web store after violating the new rules.Īccording to the Wall Street Journal, the offending browser extensions – Add to Feedly and Tweet This Page – began to serve up ads after they were silently updated with adware code.

Microsoft edge extensions injecting ads into