It is said that a system is as secure as its weakest link, and this is especially true when we browse the web. While we always want software to be robust and protect our privacy, there are other elements we are overlooking, and those are the extensions. The German news program Panorama 3 revealed that several of the most popular Firefox and Chrome extensions are collecting and selling our browsing histories, with Web of Trust leading the way.
The Unseen Costs of Free Extensions
I only have one extension in my main Firefox installation, which is DownThemAll!. As far as I understand, it doesn't present any privacy conflicts, and its license is GPL 2.0, meaning anyone can closely examine the code. But those conditions don't apply to all extensions. In fact, some are as closed as any proprietary program, and more than once we've probably wondered what they do in the background. A lot of noise was caused by Hola VPN when it was confirmed that it was selling the bandwidth of its users, although that action appears declared in the official terms. Now, what is it that we don't know? According to the German news program Panorama 3 of the Norddeutscher Rundfunk, several extensions are collecting and selling our browsing histories, with details that shouldn't be there...
The Web of Trust Revelations
The report does not provide a full list of the extensions, but it does mention one of the most offensive, which is Web of Trust. In the end, it doesn't surprise us, because we've known for a long time that Big Data doesn't feed itself, however, the journalists were particularly amazed at how easily they obtained the information, and the details they managed to extract: full names, usernames, email addresses, data on ongoing police investigations, the sexual preferences of a judge, drugs, illnesses, and even requests for... "ladies of the night", if you'll pardon the alternative expression.
The worst part is that Web of Trust claims to anonymize the information it gets from its users, but it's obviously not holding up its end. According to Big Data expert Andreas Dewes, it is nonsense that extensions leave this data exposed, as it represents a total lack of respect for the privacy of their users. The journalists from Panorama 3 had no difficulty identifying at least fifty users, and as expected, no one at Web of Trust was available to comment. The WoT extension was downloaded more than 140 million times... and it's just one. The privacy policies of our favorite programs are already complicated enough, and now we must also watch over those of every extension.
