Warning: Your Browser Extensions Are Spying On You (article)

From http://www.howtogeek.com/180175/warning-your-browser-extensions-are-spying-on-you/:

 

Thanks for posting this. Fortunately, I'm not using any of those extensions.

Generally preventing extension updates is probably not a very good idea since those updates usually fix existing bugs/problems. And checking each extension/update in the developer tools is not very practical.

For Chrome users probably the best approach is using HTTP Switchboard which monitors (and blocks) behind-the-scene requests by extensions. And Extensions Update Notifier is useful to inform you about automatic updates as a reminder to check again if there a new behind-the-scene requests. Needless to say that the trustworthiness of HTTPSB is the linchpin of this approach.

 

You're welcome .

For those who didn't notice, there is a list of known potentially unwanted extensions at http://discuss.howtogeek.com/t/warning-your-browser-extensions-are-spying-on-you/12394.

 

Also appearing recently in the battle against Potentially Unwanted Extensions is the new add-on for Firefox and Chrome, Extension Defender (owned by Cloudflare?), which also has an apparently interesting Blog, and at least appears a larger list of dodgy apps for Firefox.

https://www.extensiondefender.com/

Blog:http://www.extensiondefender.com/blog/

AMO: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/extension-defender/

Can't see that I'd need this myself, but could be useful for some, and any info about spying software is always welcome.

 

I only saw one extension listed in that article. Anyway, I generally stick to popular extensions: ABP, HTTPS Everywhere, Click&Clean.