Firefox and Chrome Pull Popular Browser Extension Stylish From Their Stores After Report Claimed It Logs and Shares Browsing History, Credentials

sombragris writes: Stylish, a popular extension available for Chrome and Firefox which allows for easy customization of any website, now phones home and shares its users' browser history with its corporate parent, according to blogger Robert Heaton. This prompted Firefox to ban the extension from its addons site and prompt all users to disable it. The discussion can be seen in the relevant bug report. In Heaton's words:

Stylish is no longer a well-meaning product with your best interests at heart. If you use and like Stylish, please uninstall it and switch to an alternative like Stylus, an offshoot from the good old version of Stylish that works in much the same way, minus the spyware.

Google too has pulled the extension from its extension store. This is not the first time Stylish is at the centre of a privacy debacle

Comments

We need an extention protection mechanism

[xack]

Extentions need to be protected. We need to have a last known good backup system in place for extentions at risk of being hijacked.

Re:We need an extention protection mechanism

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're on Firefox, go to about:config and flip "extensions.update.autoUpdateDefault" to "false". You can also change this per-extension by clicking on the "More" link on each extension. The first field is "Automatic Updates" and you can choose between Default, On, and Off.

If you were using stylish on Firefox....

[gerald.edward.butler]

I was using stylish for quite some-time. I'm disappointed that this kind of breaking of trust occurred with that extension. I've now switched over to stylus instead. It works great (even better than stylish). It seems to behave better, have a better UI, and more stability. So, if you're unsure what to use, definitely give stylus a try.