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Popular Chrome Extension Sold To New Dev Who Immediately Turns It Into Adware (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A company is going around buying abandoned Chrome extensions from their original developers and converting these add-ons into adware. The latest case is the Particle for YouTube Chrome extension, a simple tool that allows users to change the UI and behavior of some of YouTube's standard features. Because Google was planning major changes to YouTube's UI, the extension's original author decided to retire it and create a new one. This is when the a mysterious company approached the original author and offered to buy the extension from him for a price of his choosing. The original dev says he gave them a high price, but the company agreed to pay right away, but only after the dev signed an non-disclosure agreement preventing him from talking about the company or the transaction. Soon after the sale, the company issued an update that included code for injecting rogue ads on websites such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, Amazon, eBay, and Booking.com. Users also found other Chrome extensions that were also bought by the same company and had also been turned into adware, such as "Typewriter Sounds" and "Twitch Mini Player." According to some other Chrome extension devs, there are many companies willing to pay large sums of money for taking over legitimate Chrome extensions.
https://pi-hole.net/
Run it in a VM if necessary.
Beware of the Leopard.
Now we just need Google to update the Chrome extension policy to require
The Developer MUST notify Google prior to any sale or acquiring, disposing, or changing beneficial ownership regarding any app software And disclose to all users the sale 30 days prior to any further software updates, details of the acquirer, and any other business the acquirer has regarding Chrome-related extensions, Otherwise, the author and publisher of any updated version agree to each pay Google the sum of $10 Million dollars, in the event the original developer or acquirer is negligent in their duty to notify.
When the banner ad showed up, I mentioned that my adblocker didn't work on it. Someone suggested uBlock Origin, which is what I now use. No ads anywhere.
Looking at the uBlock icon above, it is blocking 11 items on this page. A couple days ago, one site had over 100 items blocked, with a few more new things being blocked every few seconds. I closed the tab soon after I finished reading the news item, and the count was about 170.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
RTFA and look at the Particle extension (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/particle/bpmpggcmojdddlmihdbobccijhkkjpan?hl=en). Still the original author.
I'm pretty sure the NDA says the author IS barred from saying "I sold the business to a 3rd party and had nothing to do with the plugin update." The individual/company buying the extension want to take advantage of the goodwill the author originally came up with.
Hopefully, for Aiden, he got enough money to make it worth it.
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
You mean you don't use an adblocker? Then you deserve what you get.