Popular Steam Extension 'Inventory Helper' Spies On Users, Says Report (windowsreport.com)

SmartAboutThings shares a report from Windows Report: If you installed the "Steam Inventory Helper" on your computer, you may want to uninstall it as soon as possible. Recent reports suggest that this extension used to buy and sell digital goods on Steam is spying on its users. Redditor Wartab made a thorough analysis of the tool and reached the following conclusions: The spyware code tracks your every move starting from the moment you visit a website until you leave. It also tracks where you are coming from on the site; Steam Inventory Helper tracks your clicks, including when you are moving your mouse and when you are having focus in an input; When you click a link, it sends the link URL to a background script; Fortunately, the code does not monitor what you type. Apparently, the purpose of this spyware is to collect data about gamers for promotional purposes.

Comments

Yet another argument for source code

[DrYak]

Yet another argument showing why it is better to favour software with visible source code.
Not that the GPL contains "magic pixie dust" in it that miraculously repel this kind of abuse.

But it just makes this kind of analysis a little bit more easy.

Here author manager to get a hang of what the extension is doing, because it's still in javascript (theoretically humean-readable) though still heavily obscured (the analyst provides links to slightly de-obscured files).

If this was a completely opaque closed source binary, analysis would have been much more difficult.

On the other hand, if this was a completely free/libre opensource software, this kind of analysis would have been much easier and could happen much earlier (and you would expect de-spyware-ified forks to pop-up on github at the same time as such disclosure).

Re:Why would anyone install a Chrome Extension

[bravecanadian]

My favourite extensions are the ad blockers owned by advertising companies.

I mean at this point, you literally can't trust anything to not be spying on you. Not even just your computer, but your phone, your home automation, your thermastat, your car.. the list just goes on and on.

It's ridiculous that things have gotten to this state.