“Actors who are asking me to add some tracking code are mostly interested in reselling users’ data,” Anashkin said. “Actors who want to purchase it outright will stuff it with malware depending on their level of greed: hijacking affiliate links, tampering with search results, showing popups with shady websites, etc.”

Anashkin’s experience appears to be fairly common. Developers have discussed these solicitations in online forums and several have written blog posts about selling extensions or partnership offers.

    • lolgcat@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Props to Oleg/hoverzoom for maintaining and updating this list for all to read. It’s my first time seeing any document of this kind really. Quiet chilling

    • Doombot1@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      Wowza. That’s terrible. Thank goodness he hasn’t sold out; I love hoverzoom. If only my freaking work’s IT wouldn’t’ve banned extensions 🙃

  • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    I get these offers almost daily for my Chrome extension, and have done for years. I couldn’t do it to the users, but they wouldn’t be making the offers if some people weren’t accepting.