The data shows that the extension tracks the user’s browsing mode by monitoring the user with an ID. This extension has now been removed from addons.mozilla.org.
The popular Firefox add-on, Web Security collects user browsing history
uBlock Origin author Raymond Hill and German security privacy blogger Mike Kuketz report that a popular Firefox extension will quietly collect user browsing history. The add-on is called Web Security, with more than 220,000 installations and even recommendations from the official Firefox blog.
But Hill quickly noticed that the extension showed a strange behaviour: after installation, whenever a user’s browser loads a web page, it sends a POST to http://136.243.163.73/. The POST data was confusing, and the user deciphered the data and found that it was the URL that the user visited.
Hill said, “With this extension, I see that for every page you load in your browser, there is a POST to http://136.243.163.73/. The posted data is garbled; maybe someone will have the time to investigate further.”
