Google removes over 500 malicious extensions from the Chrome Extension Web Store

Google just discovered what we’ve known for a long, long time — many extensions can not be trusted.

Epic has since inception blocked almost all extensions, because many, many extensions track, save and sell your browsing data. One of the most ironically titled extensions discovered doing this is the now-infamous “Web of Trust”, but there are hundreds of others as Google just discovered.

In order to provide a high level of privacy it’s essential to use as few browser add-ons as possible and only those from trusted publishers. That’s been our policy and why our users have been safe while many Chrome users sadly weren’t.

We believe Google and others should insist on transparent data usage policies from every extension (i.e. do you share data with third parties, do you get compensated for it, what data and with whom). While we of course believe in privacy, it’s essential at least to at least have transparency in data usage and sharing policies for extensions and other data gathering software.