It should not happen that extensions get modified in key aspects without existing users being made aware of those changes. We have already seen how companies take advantage of Mozilla’s add-on repository by approaching add-on developers to purchase their extensions or have them modify it to gather data or implement money making schemes into the extensions.
Today it became known that the author of the popular HoverZoom extension for the Google Chrome browser also implemented “features” into the extension that many users will certainly consider unethical if only they knew about them. A user of the extension noticed that it was acting up when connections to Github were made and after additional users reported the same issue, one user wanted to know why Hoverzoom needed to POST to a Czech media company server (http://advisormedia.cz/).
The author’s reply confirmed that he agreed to enter a partnership with the company. According to his post, the script is detecting unused domain names and posts those information to the media company’s site.
This script was added after a partnership has been established with a media consulting company. It detects unused domain names and posts the results to their site. The collected data is strictly anonymous.
Read More Here
Today it became known that the author of the popular HoverZoom extension for the Google Chrome browser also implemented “features” into the extension that many users will certainly consider unethical if only they knew about them. A user of the extension noticed that it was acting up when connections to Github were made and after additional users reported the same issue, one user wanted to know why Hoverzoom needed to POST to a Czech media company server (http://advisormedia.cz/).
The author’s reply confirmed that he agreed to enter a partnership with the company. According to his post, the script is detecting unused domain names and posts those information to the media company’s site.
This script was added after a partnership has been established with a media consulting company. It detects unused domain names and posts the results to their site. The collected data is strictly anonymous.
Read More Here
