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itemized_receipts [soylentnews.org] writes:

How a Chinese company built a $250 million search hijacking empire [medium.com]:

A publicly listed Chinese company has used a series of offshore shell companies to conceal their ownership of browser extensions that purport to offer a private search engine to users. These extensions with names like Search Encrypt and Hide My Searches engage in a form of ad fraud called search hijacking whereby searches are intercepted and redirected from one search engine to another. Our research has identified almost 7 million users who are affected by these malware extensions, which are helping this company generate almost $250 million a year in revenue.

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