In a off-late study, Google deleted two extensions with names ‘Add to Feedly’ and ‘Tweet this Page’ from its Chrome Web Store after it discovered they were providing viruses to their users. The extensions in return, which were at starting safe to use by any individual before being taken over by some third-parties from their initial makers for doubtlessly a good sum of money, began displaying advertisements almost on all web pages a user would browse through. What’s even bad is the fact that these commercials were opt-out instead of opt-in. Unfortunately, there’s presently no official characteristic in position that would save the privacy of the users from giving out such extensions in the future. Nonetheless, a brand new extension by the name of ExtShield has been made in reaction to this report, in order to guard your web browser from harmful extensions.
News that software producers are in search of opportunities to purchase popular extensions and hence in search to make money as yield by profusing updated adware code upon new ownership was first burst out by Amit Agarwal of Digital Inspiration. According to Amit’s blog post, he initially created ‘Add to Feedly’ after changing to Feedly’s RSS service when he discovered that the the service didn’t possess an official Chrome extension for the job. After making Add To Feedly for his own use, he at a later point of time made it available on Chrome Web Store, where it rapidly gained a huge user base.
According to Amit, the purchaser profused the new code to users with the help of an update with no extra functionalities other than the adware code, which was attached for providing service to online affiliate links and commercials on webpages. And because Chrome updates its extension in the background without user interference, many user’s didn’t even have the knowledge that their browser was now flooded with adware.
I’m not certain how ExtShield would guard users from such kind of viruses, but the extension is planned to monitor updated and freshly installed extensions in Chrome on a regular basis, enabling it to report you on the fly if a malicious extension has been discovered. You wouldn’t discover any tailer-make settings or customizable metrics in ExtShield; it’s instead set-it-and-forget-it type of extension as of now. When you click its icon from Chrome’s Omnibar, you’re merely shown with a rather plain screen titled Protector, along with by a text snippet showing that any dangerous malware, spyware and adware extensions are currently being monitored.
Nevertheless, it’s really nice to see that extensions like ExtShield have started showing up in the Chrome Web Store as a phae to cut on the possibilities of your browser getting attacked with malicious code. You can have the free extension with the link provided below.
Download ExtShield
