"Stylish" browser extension steals all your internet history
Found on Robert Heaton on Thursday, 05 July 2018
Unfortunately, since January 2017, Stylish has been augmented with bonus spyware that records every single website that I and its 2 million other users visit. Stylish sends our complete browsing activity back to its servers, together with a unique identifier. This allows it’s new owner, SimilarWeb, to connect all of an individual’s actions into a single profile.
Stylish’s transition from visual Valhalla to privacy Chernobyl began when the original owner and creator of Stylish sold it in August 2016. In January 2017 the new owner sold it again, announcing that “Stylish is now part of the SimilarWeb family”. The SimilarWeb family’s promotional literature lists “Market Solutions To See All Your Competitors’ Traffic” amongst its interests.
That's one of the problems with the entire plugin ecosystem: everybody can release plugins, and everybody can install them. However, users won't get any notifications about owner changes or new "features". That's why it's best to keep the plugin-list as short and trusted as possible.