Chrome Web Store: Is it news... or tradition?

[m00nbl00d]

We all know the game Angry Birds [...] without Apple or Android device there is no way to play it.

This market niche was not overlooked for long, and quickly free versions of games that claimed to be the original Bad Piggies appeared on the Google Chrome web store.

[...]

But when our Barracuda Labs team took a closer look at these games we noticed several questionable items.

[...]

Read the rest here: -https://www.barracudanetworks.com/blogs/labsblog?bid=3103

I can't say that I'm that surprised, to be honest.

[Hungry Man]

Yep. Wrote about it the other day.

Not too surprising. Hopefully Google will come out with the new CSP and permissions - that way legitimate extensions won't ask for such egregious rights and it will make spotting dangerous extensions much easier.

[TheWindBringeth]

So Google's Web Store review process is worthless?

[m00nbl00d]

Originally Posted by TheWindBringeth

So Google's Web Store review process is worthless?

Pretty much. I mean, if we take under consideration the many situations like these that already happened in a not so distant past, it's acceptable to say it sucks.

They have released a new functionality in Chromium and Chrome Canary builds, that will let users know which extensions are manipulating the current website. I mentioned in a thread at other software & services (http://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=333655). But, I'm still not sure how it will help the vast majority of Google Chrome users. Will they (users) even notice there's some icon in the address bar? They probably will just ignore it all together. Time will tell...

[TheWindBringeth]

Making it easy for users to identify what is manipulating what is great. However, what users really need is the ability to "easily" control (override) what an extension, app, or website can/cannot do. In the case of an extension or app, a logical approach might be to have the add dialog display the permissions requested but also have an Adjust button so that the *user's* desired permissions/rules can be selected before it is installed.