Browsers nix add-on after Web of Trust is caught selling users' browsing histories

Last week, an investigative report by journalists at the Hamburg-based German television broadcaster, Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), revealed that Web of Trust Services (WoT) had been harvesting netizens' web browsing histories through its browser add-on and then selling them to third parties.

Although surveillance may be a feature of WoT's add-on, the risk it poses to users' security may be greater. An analysis of its code posted to GitHub by Rob Wu revealed that the add-on was able to execute arbitrary code on any page, including privileged browser pages, although such a functionality had not been abused at the time of Wu's analysis.