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Mozilla Removes 23 Firefox Add-Ons That Snooped On Users

Rejected submission by Anonymous Coward at 2018-08-18 01:20:59 from the Totally-secure-as-long-as-you-don't-look. dept.
Security

Mozilla removed 23 add-ons that snooped on users in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1483995 [mozilla.org] after it was discovered that the featured extension "Web Security" was stealing user information. In response, Rob Wu, a Mozilla Browser Engineer and Add-on review, investigated more add-ons for contacting the same server. Amazing how quickly they found the problem once it was pointed out, or in the words of a fellow Soylentil posted on the green site:

All I know is that I have reported multiple addons, INCLUDING SOME ON THAT LIST, multiple times over the past few months and nothing happened. In fact, there are other addons (in both the AMO and Chrome webstore sites) that track their users as well, but because I don't have a platform, nothing got done. For example, https://github.com/uBlock-LLC/uBlock [github.com] violates the rules of all the extension stores. I tried reporting it to no avail for a few days and nothing happened, so I reported it on various places on the web, it finally got picked up on soylentnews.org and someone there put it on reddit, and then one of the core devs for AMO saw it and removed it (it was still available on Chrome store). Of course, uBlock became available again on AMO on the next push, despite still being in violation, but no one seems to care as my reports go nowhere. Sure, there are way worse offenders than uBlock, but they are the most obvious, widely used, and public example. As far as I'm concerned, AMO doesn't care about the garbage available on their website until they are caught, in public, with their pants down.


Original Submission