How to check the Chrome extension for safety and find a more secure alternative
Browsers / / December 19, 2019
Many plugins for Chrome ask for a bunch of permissions, so it is likely that after the installation of your personal data fall into the hands of outsiders. Web tool called CRXcavator in detail tell how safe a particular extension, and will offer several other options.
All you need to do - is to enter the name of the plugin or identifier from the Chrome Web Store. You'll see a graph with four risk categories - "Security Policy» (Content Security Policy), "External Treatment» (External Calls), «Description of the store» (Webstore Details) and the "Permissions" (Permissions). The higher the bar, the less secure the extension.
Scroll down, you will find a more detailed description of the rights and be able to know how much they are critical. Also, you can see the plugin refers to what resources. At the end it will be shown similar extensions, among which you can find something more secure.
Tools developed by the area of Internet security Duo Labs. In January, she checked more than 120 thousand extensions and found that nearly 85% of them do not have a privacy policy, and 35% can read your data on all websites. Moreover, almost 32% of the plugins have vulnerabilities.
It is worth noting that the company has automated analysis - CRXcavator scans the Chrome store and updates the results every three hours. Therefore, we can not worry about the relevance of the information about the extensions that interest you.
CRXcavator →