Your information is being stolen by these 11 Chrome extensions. Uninstalling them as soon as possible is crucial

Your information is being stolen by these 11 Chrome extensions. Uninstalling them as soon as possible is crucial.

With extra features that let you browse the internet more effectively, Google Chrome extensions are incredibly helpful tools in daily life. But things aren't always as they seem. Malicious extensions can occasionally infiltrate browsers to monitor user activity or send users to risky websites.

Cybersecurity companies alert Google to remove these hidden threats from the Chrome Web Store by publishing reports on a regular basis. In this instance, Koi Security was the one to warn about a collection of extensions that pose as innocuous features in order to hide their harmful activity.

These add-ons are marketed as tools that seem helpful, like volume boosters, emoji keyboards, and VPNs. They do, however, run a sophisticated system in the background that is intended to steal private data. The fact that these add-ons have already been downloaded over 1.7 million times is even more concerning.

Google's security filters have been successfully circumvented by many of these extensions, as evidenced by their verification, hundreds of positive reviews, and inclusion in the Chrome Store.

Although some of these extensions have already been taken down from the Chrome Web Store, users who have them installed will still not see them automatically removed from their browsers. As a result, if any of the following extensions are installed in your browser, it is advised that you check and remove them right away:

Color Picker, Eyedropper

Emoji keyboard online

Free Weather Forecast

Video Speed Controller

Unlock Discord

Dark Theme

Volume Max

Unblock TikTok

Unlock YouTube VPN

Unlock TikTok

Weather

Researchers explain that these extensions operate in the background using the Chrome Extensions API to record user activity as they navigate to new pages. Additionally, they can redirect visits to malicious websites without the user's notice.

Google Chrome wasn't the only one affected. According to Koi, the same extensions were also discovered in the official Microsoft Edge store, where they had garnered another 600,000 downloads. This reinforces the urgent need to review installed extensions and remove those listed as potentially dangerous.