Using add ons can be a great way of making sure that your internet experience can end up becoming just what you want it to be. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that sometimes the extensions you end up using won’t be legitimate in every way, shape or form, and as a result of the fact that this is the case you might just end up downloading something or the other that would be bad for your system in some way, shape or form and could cause a lot more problems than it would have the capacity to solve.
A number of fake extensions have been discovered on the add-ons store for Microsoft Edge. These extensions use the name of well known VPNs such as Nord VPN, Adguard VPN and Tunnel Bear VPN and other utilities including 'The Great Suspender' and 'Floating Player - Picture-in-Picture Mode'. Suffice it to say that these companies are not actually involved with these extensions, and there name is being used to make the extensions seem more legitimate than they actually are. If you were to use an extension such as one of these, all that would happen would be that your search queries in any search engine that you prefer to use would end up being redirected through something known as OKSearch which would basically increase the number of ads that you need to look at.
More ads means more money being earned by the malicious actors that created these extensions, but it can really reduce the quality of your overall user experience. Microsoft has removed these extensions now, but if you had installed them before this removal you should get rid of them as soon as possible. While Microsoft has made it so that the extension would be disabled on any browser that still has them, you should still remove them just to be on the safe side.
This is not the first the company has acted on malicious edge extensions. Back in August of this year, the company removed several malicious edge extensions. Moreover, in May, the Dark Reader developer notified Microsoft that there are several Dark Reader extensions on Edge Add-ons Store containing malicious code. In response, Microsoft removed them from Edge Add-ons Store. The company also removed extensions that were injecting ads into Search Results.
Chrome Web Store also has the issue of this malicious extension, in August Chrome Web Store deleted extensions after users reported that they were injecting ads into Google and Bing search results. These incididents shows that the tech giants need to vet through the duplicates of popular extensions and delete them from their stores.
H/T: TechDows / Reddit 1. 2.
Read next: Google is extending its Chrome support for Microsoft Windows 7 until 15th January 2022
A number of fake extensions have been discovered on the add-ons store for Microsoft Edge. These extensions use the name of well known VPNs such as Nord VPN, Adguard VPN and Tunnel Bear VPN and other utilities including 'The Great Suspender' and 'Floating Player - Picture-in-Picture Mode'. Suffice it to say that these companies are not actually involved with these extensions, and there name is being used to make the extensions seem more legitimate than they actually are. If you were to use an extension such as one of these, all that would happen would be that your search queries in any search engine that you prefer to use would end up being redirected through something known as OKSearch which would basically increase the number of ads that you need to look at.
More ads means more money being earned by the malicious actors that created these extensions, but it can really reduce the quality of your overall user experience. Microsoft has removed these extensions now, but if you had installed them before this removal you should get rid of them as soon as possible. While Microsoft has made it so that the extension would be disabled on any browser that still has them, you should still remove them just to be on the safe side.
This is not the first the company has acted on malicious edge extensions. Back in August of this year, the company removed several malicious edge extensions. Moreover, in May, the Dark Reader developer notified Microsoft that there are several Dark Reader extensions on Edge Add-ons Store containing malicious code. In response, Microsoft removed them from Edge Add-ons Store. The company also removed extensions that were injecting ads into Search Results.
Chrome Web Store also has the issue of this malicious extension, in August Chrome Web Store deleted extensions after users reported that they were injecting ads into Google and Bing search results. These incididents shows that the tech giants need to vet through the duplicates of popular extensions and delete them from their stores.
H/T: TechDows / Reddit 1. 2.
Read next: Google is extending its Chrome support for Microsoft Windows 7 until 15th January 2022
