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8M users' AI conversations sold for profit by "privacy" extensions
- miladyincontrol 9mo agoOh, a free of cost vpn extension that requires access to all sites and data is somehow spyware, color me surprised. With those extensions the user's data and internet are the product, most if not all are also selling residential IP access for scrapers, bots, etc. Good thing Google is protecting users by taking down such harmful extensions as ublock origin instead.
- SoftTalker 9mo agoublock requires access to all sites and data. Maybe they are trustworthy but who really knows?
- fylo 9mo agoLet's say we don't trust ublock. At the very least it is still blocking ad networks which do reduce internet performance and are vectors of exploitation, so it is still adding value whether you trust it or not.
- Retr0id 9mo agoUnder the hypothetical that we don't trust ublock, it would be foolish to grant it full access to all data on all websites. It would not be adding value.
- DrewADesign 9mo agoYeah — they’d be selling enhanced versions of that data to every site they blocked, and then some. I very much doubt they are.
- bandrami 9mo agoI mean, I don't trust ublock, for what it's worth. I just disable javascript by default with has pretty much the same effect.
- netbioserror 9mo agoI treat extensions like they're all capable of privileged local code execution. My selection is very vetted and very small.
- andersa 9mo agoThe only extensions I have installed are dark reader and ublock origin. Would be nice if I could disable auto updating for them somehow and run local pinned versions...
- cluckindan 9mo agoGet the source code and manually pack your own unsigned web-ext’s.
- temp0826 9mo agoAdd-ons Manager -> (click the add-on in question) -> change "Allow automatic updates" to "Off" (for firefox/derivatives anyways...)
- matheusmoreira 9mo agoSame here, uBlock Origin and EFF's Privacy Badger are the only extensions I trust enough to install.
- eszed 9mo agoDitto, plus 1pass / BitWarden.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- bennydog224 9mo agoGoogle needs to act on removing these extensions/doing more thorough code reviews. Reputability is everything, and they can be actually valuable (e.g. LastPass, my own extension Ward) There has to be a better system. Maybe a public extension safety directory?
- H8crilA 9mo agoDo you think Google wants to have the extensions system, given that this is how people block ads?
- bennydog224 9mo agoI wouldn’t be surprised if it goes away - it’s very “old Google”. We’re moving more towards walled gardens.
- Liquix 9mo agoadblockers on chromium-based browsers were severely crippled by manifest V3. they're fine with extenisons (and apparently malware) as long as users can't effectively block their tracking/ads.
- Legend2440 9mo agoAdblockers are still working fine though? I’m on chrome with ublock and I’m not seeing any ads.
- anonym29 9mo agoyou're not using ublock, you're using ublock lite. it cannot do dynamic filtering, script blocking, or url parameter removal, among other limitations.
- charcircuit 9mo agoWhy does that matter if he's not seeing ads. A severely crippled adblocker means that you would see ads during regular usage. Additionally, Brave a chromium based browser has adblocking built into the browser itself meaning it is not affected by webextention changes and does not require trusting an additional 3rd party.
- free_bip 9mo agoIs the use of WebAssembly going to make spotting these malicious extensions harder?
- pyrolistical 9mo agoProbably not. All side effects need to go through the js side. So you can alway see where http calls are made
- x-complexity 9mo ago> Probably not. All side effects need to go through the js side. So you can alway see where http calls are made That can be circumnavigated by bundling the conversations into one POST to an API endpoint, along with a few hundred calls to several dummy endpoints to muddy the waters. Bonus points if you can make it look like an normal-passing update script. It'll still show up in the end, but at this point your main goal is to delay the discovery as much as you can.
- g947o 9mo agoAs soon as you hijack the fetch function (which cannot be done with WebAssembly alone), it's going to look suspicious, and someone who looks at this carefully enough will flag it.
- notjonheyman 9mo agoFrom my experience, Google does not do a thorough app review. Reviewers get maybe a few minutes to review and move on due to the volume of apps awaiting review.
- Oarch 9mo agoI imagine this would be a great use case for AI helping out?
- free_bip 9mo agoNo way that could backfire... Prompt injection is a solved problem right?
- automatedideas 9mo ago“There’s too much human harmful code to review and too few human reviewers.” “I know, let’s have an AI do all the work for us instead. Let’s take a coffee break.”
- lodovic 9mo agoI'm thinking of installing the extension in a sandbox and then use a local agent to have endless fake conversations with it
- umrashrf 9mo agoI am surprised because google review team rejects half of my extensions and apps. Sometimes things don't make sense to me, like how "Uber Driver app access background location and there is no way to change that from settings" - https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/783227 https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/783227
- marcellus23 9mo agoI think what's going on there is that "While using" includes when a navigation app is running in the background, which is visible to the user (via e.g. a blue status bar pill). "Always" allows access even when it's not clear to the user that an app is running. The developer documentation is actually pretty clear about this: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/choosing-the-location-services-authorization-to-request https://developer.apple.com/documentation/bundleresources/ch...
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- qwertox 9mo agoIf Google would care at all for their users, they'd tell WhatsApp to not require the use of the Contacts permission only to add names to numbers when you don't share the Contacts with the App. Or they'd tell WhatsApp to allow granting microphone permissions for one single call, instead of requesting permanent microphone permissions. All apps that I know of respect the flow of "Ask every time", all but Meta's app. Google just doesn't care.
- uyzstvqs 9mo agoThat's all opinionated, and the latter is part of the OS, not WhatsApp. Not liking how an app works does not compare to an app exfiltrating data without your consent.
- donohoe 9mo agoThey are not comparing it to the data issue. The original issue was lead to further conversation. It’s a valid concern and they make a good point.
- dguido 9mo agoIf you want a VPN you can trust, deploy your own with AlgoVPN: https://github.com/trailofbits/algo https://github.com/trailofbits/algo
- bluepuma77 9mo agoI prefer WG-Easy (https://github.com/wg-easy/wg-easy https://github.com/wg-easy/wg-easy), which uses a Docker container, not ansible.
- chmod775 9mo agoThe company behind this appears to be "real" and incorporated in Delaware. > Urban Cyber Security INC https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_de/5136044 https://opencorporates.com/companies/us_de/5136044 https://www.urbancybersec.com/about-us/ https://www.urbancybersec.com/about-us/ I found two addresses: > 1007 North Orange Street 4th floor Wilmington, DE 19801 US > 510 5th Ave 3rd floor New York, NY 10036 United States and even a phone number: +1 917-690-8380 https://www.manhattan-nyc.com/businesses/urban-cyber-security-inc--g-11fkdh2lmv/ https://www.manhattan-nyc.com/businesses/urban-cyber-securit... They look really legitimate on the outside, to the point that there's a fair chance they're not aware what their extension is doing. Possibly they're "victim" of this as well.
- ch2026 9mo agohttps://www.manhattanvirtualoffice.com/ https://www.manhattanvirtualoffice.com/ The NY address is a virtual office. https://themillspace.com/wilmington/ https://themillspace.com/wilmington/ The DE address is a virtual office plus coworking facility.
- azinman2 9mo agoWow the virtual office concept is so beyond shady. I wonder if there are any legitimate uses of it?
- ryanjshaw 9mo agoMany: You run a business from home but do not want to reveal you personal address to the world. You are from a country that Stripe doesn’t support but need to make use of their unique capabilities like Stripe Connect, then you might sign up for Stripe Atlas to incorporate in the USA so you can do business directly with Stripe. Your US business then needs a US physical address ie virtual office. Etc
- victorbjorklund 9mo agoThat you don’t need an office if your company works remotely? Kind of overkill with a whole office for a company with 3 people working at it and everyone works remotely.
- varenc 9mo agoWhat is the economic value of all these AI chat logs? I can see it useful for developing advertising profile. But I wonder if it's also just sold as training data for people try to build their own models?
- stevenjgarner 9mo agoPretty easy to match up those logs with browser fingerprinting to identify the actual user. Then you have "do you want to purchase what Mr. Foo Bar is prompting the LLM?"
- AznHisoka 9mo agoNot just advertising but market research. Loads of people want to know exactly what type of questions ppl are asking these chat bots
- wnevets 9mo agoI thought manifest v3 was supposed to make chrome extensions secure?
- tlogan 9mo agoLet me ask you this way: How do you think they make money?
- PeterHolzwarth 9mo agoI believe you may be missing the sarcasm of the post you are responding to.
- johncolanduoni 9mo agoI’m here to inform you that you perhaps missed the second-order sarcasm of the post you responded to. Hopefully the chain ends here.
- CafeRacer 9mo agoI am afraid you may have missed a third order of sarcasm. It sometimes called Incepticasm.
- droopyEyelids 9mo agoHe may have understood it, but the feelings of anger about it are so overwhelming he had to post anyway, even if it didn't perfectly flow with the conversation.
- adrr 9mo agoIts the reason why they found it because the code was in extension. Before manifest v3, extensions could just load external scripts and there's no way you could tell what they were actually doing.
- g947o 9mo ago
- QuadrupleA 9mo agoSo much of what's aimed at nontechnical consumers these days is full of dishonesty and abuse. Microsoft kinda turned Windows into something like this, you need OneDrive "for your protection", new telemetry and ads with every update, etc. In much of the physical world thankfully there's laws and pretty-effective enforcement against people clubbing you on the head and taking your stuff, retail stores selling fake products and empty boxes, etc. But the tech world is this ever-boiling global cauldron of intangible software processes and code - hard to get a handle on what to even regulate. Wish people would just be decent to each other, and that that would be culturally valued over materialism and moneymaking by any possible means. Perhaps it'll make a comeback.
- rkagerer 9mo agoThis was a nearly poetic way to put it. Thank you for ascribing words to a problem that equally frustrates me. I spend a lot of time trying to think of concrete ways to improve the situation, and would love to hear people's ideas. Instinctively I tend to agree it largely comes down to treating your users like human beings.
- therobots927 9mo agoThe situation won’t be improved for as long as an incentive structure exists that drives the degradation of the user experience. Get as off-grid as you possibly can. Try to make your everyday use of technology as deterministic as possible. The free market punishes anyone who “respects their users”. Your best bet is some type of tech co-op funded partially by a billionaire who decided to be nice one day.
- pksebben 9mo agoWe're not totally unempowered here, as folks who know how to tech. We can build open source alternatives that are as easy to use and install as the <epithet>-ware we are trying to combat. Part of the problem has been that there's a mountain to climb vis a vis that extra ten miles to take something that 'works for me' and turn it into 'gramps can install this and it doesn't trigger his alopecia'. Rather, that was the problem. If you're looking for a use case for LLMs, look no further. We do actually have the capacity to build user-friendly stuff at a fraction of the time cost that we used to. We can make the world a better place if we actually give a shit. Make things out in the open, for free, that benefit people who aren't in tech. Chip away at the monopolies by offering a competitive service because it's the right thing to do and history will vindicate you instead of trying to squeeze a buck out of each and every thing. I'm not saying "don't do a thing for money". You need to do that. We all need to do that. But instead of your next binge watch or fiftieth foray into Zandronum on brutal difficulty, maybe badger your llm to do all the UX/UI tweaks you could never be assed to do for that app you made that one time, so real people can use it. I'm dead certain that there are folks reading this now who have VPN or privacy solutions they've cooked up that don't steal all your data and aren't going to cost you an arm and a leg. At the very least, someone reading this has a network plugin that can sniff for exfiltrated data to known compromised networks (including data brokers) - it's probably just finicky to install, highly technical, and delicate outside of your machine. Tell claude to package that shit so larry luddite can install it and reap the benefits without learning what a bash is or how to emacs.
- 2bird3 9mo agoAs someone who has witnessed BiScience tracking in the past, I am not surprised to to hear that they might be involved in all this. They came up in the past when researchers investigated the cyberhaven compromise [1][2]. Though the correlation might not all be there its kind of disappointing [1] https://secureannex.com/blog/cyberhaven-extension-compromise/ https://secureannex.com/blog/cyberhaven-extension-compromise.... [2] https://secureannex.com/blog/sclpfybn-moneitization-scheme/ https://secureannex.com/blog/sclpfybn-moneitization-scheme/ (referenced in the article)
- tlogan 9mo agoDeleted.
- atmosx 9mo agoThere is a “contradictions” section that clearly explains why this is a scam of the highest order. There are honest ways to make a living. In this case honest is “being transparent” about the way data is handled instead of using newspeak.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- jrochkind1 9mo agoThe guy that holds up people for money in the alley is a human too, people forget, and needs to pay for food and a place to live. Of course they do too.
- cycomanic 9mo agoWhat sort of argument is that? Just because I need to eat (also let's be real the developers/owners behind this app are not struggling to get food on the table), does excuse me doing unethical/illegal things (and this behaviour is almost certainly illegal in the EU at least).
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- jrochkind1 9mo agoIs this criminally prosecutable?
- mat_b 9mo agoI don't understand why so many people are using / trusting VPNs "Let us handle all your internet traffic.. you can trust us.. we're free!" No thank you.
- fragmede 9mo agoYeah free VPN is totally a problem, but there's TLS so at least those users aren't getting their bank account information stolen.
- Egor3f 9mo agoTLS works when app is installed somewhere else, but not in browser itself. Browser actually handles TLS termination.
- bsaul 9mo agoDoes tls means certificate pinning ? Can't a vpn alter dns queries to return a proxy website to your bank, using a forged certificate ?
- bandrami 9mo agoOnly if you've added a signing certificate the VPN controls to your CA chain. But at that point they don't have to do anything as complicated as you described.
- notpushkin 9mo agoTLS means “there’s a certificate”. Yeah, if a VPN/proxy can forge a certificate that the user’s browser would trust, it’s an issue. But considering those are browser extensions, I think they can just inspect any traffic they want on the client side (if they can get such broad permissions approved, which is probably not too hard).
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- Joker_vD 9mo ago
- why-o-why 9mo agoI'm glad the extension system isn't broken (e.g. extensions being hacked). This is just scammy extensions to begin with. I've been scared of extensions since they were first offered (I did like useing greasemonkey to customize everything back in the 2000's/2010's), but I can't resist privacy badger and Ublock Origin since they are open source (but even then it's still a risk).
- daniel_iversen 9mo agoWould using native AI apps only prevent this? I think so right?
- deepfriedbits 9mo agoCorrect. The article is about Chrome and MS Edge browser extensions.
- nottorp 9mo agoWhich "AI" has a native app? Or you mean the web sites packed with a copy of chromium?
- awaymazdacx5 9mo agoThere were these two people. And um, a boy and a girl. ... Anyway, the thing was that one day they started acting kinda funny. Kinda, weird. They started being seen exchanging tokens of affection. And it was rumoured they were engaging in...
- GeekyBear 9mo agoI stick to extensions that Mozilla has manually vetted as part of the Firefox recommended extensions program. > Firefox is committed to helping protect you against third-party software that may inadvertently compromise your data – or worse – breach your privacy with malicious intent. Before an extension receives Recommended status, it undergoes rigorous technical review by staff security experts. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recommended-extensions-program https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/recommended-extensions-... I know that Google hates to pay human beings, but this is an area that needs human eyes on code, not just automated scans.
- Llamamoe 9mo ago> I know that Google hates to pay human beings, but this is an area that needs human eyes on code, not automated scans. I think we need both human review and for somebody to create an antivirus engine for code that's on par with the heuristics of good AV programs. You could probably do even better than that since you could actually execute the code, whole or piecewise, with debugging, tracing, coverage testing, fuzzing and so on.
- Santosh83 9mo agoYeah IT pros and tech aware "power" users can always take these measures but the very availability of poor or maliciously coded extensions and apps in popular app stores makes it a problem considering normies will get swayed by the swanky features the software promises and will click past all misgivings and warnings. Social engineering attacks are impossible to prevent using technical means alone. Either a critical mass of ordinary people need to become more safety/privacy conscious or general purpose computing devices will become more & more niche as the very industry which creates these problems in the first place by poor review will also sell the solution of universal thin-clients and locked down devices, of course with the very happy cooperation of govts everywhere.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- Terr_ 9mo ago> I stick to extensions that Mozilla has manually vetted as part of the Firefox recommended extensions program. If you're feeling extra-paranoid, the XPI file can be unpacked (ZIP) and to check over the code for anything suspicious or unreasonably-complex, particularly if the browser-extension is supposed to be something simple like "move the up/down vote arrows further apart on HN". :P While that doesn't solve the overall ecosystem issue, every little bit helps. You'll know it's time to run away if extensions become closed-source blobs.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- throw310822 9mo ago[flagged]
- banku_brougham 9mo agoI would figure state actors don’t need to go through the trouble of a browser extension. But, yeah.
- onion2k 9mo agoI'm not a spy so I don't know, but surely in most scenarios it's a lot easier to just ask someone for some data than it is hack/steal it. 25 years of social media has shown that people really don't care about what they do with their data.
- Leptonmaniac 9mo agoWasn't there a comment on this phenomenon along the lines "we were so afraid of 1984 but what we really got was Brave New World"?
- omnicognate 9mo agoThe apathy of the oppressed is a core theme of 1984.
- XorNot 9mo agoNot really? In 1984 you were made an active participant of the oppression. The thought police and 5 minutes hate all required your active, enthusiastic participation. Brave New World was apathy: the system was comfortable, Soma was freely available and there was a whole system to give disruptive elements comfortable but non disruptive engagement. The protagonist in Brave New World spends a lot of time resenting the system but really he just resents his deformity, wanted what it denied him in society, and had no real higher criticisms of it beyond what he felt he couldn't have.
- drnick1 9mo ago> A "Featured" badge from Google, meaning it had passed manual review and met what Google describes as "a high standard of user experience and design." Trusting Google with your privacy is like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.
- Dylan16807 9mo ago8 million users on sketchy VPN extensions. 70 thousand users on what I would actually call "privacy" extensions. Bit of a misleading title then.
- mjmas 9mo ago> This means a human at Google reviewed Urban VPN Proxy and concluded it met their standards. Or that the review happened before the code harvested all the LLM conversations and never got reviewed after it was updated.
- growt 9mo agoI think this is most likely what happened. The update/review process for extensions is broken. Apparently you can add any malicious functionality after you’re in and also keep any badges and recommendations.
- andsoitis 9mo ago> A free VPN promising privacy and security. If you are not paying for the product, you are the product.
- frm88 9mo agoCan we please, please stop using this absolutely deprecated proverb? As shown in YouTube lite, Samsung fridges with ads, cars with telemetry etc. etc. even if you paid, you are still subject to manipulation, spyware, ads and telemetry. It has absolutely nothing to do with payment.
- andsoitis 9mo agoWhile that’s not untrue, I think one ought to be extra suspicious if you get something of value (eg VPN software that guarantees privacy and security, in this particular case), that cost the operator money but you get it for free. Perhaps a better proverb would be: there ain’t no free lunch.
- hexagonwin 9mo agolol, this Urban VPN addon was available for Firefox too but got removed at some point. https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1jb4ura/what_happened_to_urban_vpn_proxy/ https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1jb4ura/what_happe...
- Agraillo 9mo agoThanks, the last fetched page on archive.org is from 2025-01-26 [1], removed after this date and before 2025-02-13. 155,477 users at the moment, 1 star reviews were mostly about not working. It's interesting that the developers didn't care to remove the button directing to the ff add-on page at least several months after the removal. Maybe was some kind of PR compromise, they probably thought that listing it with linking to a broken page was better than not listing at all. A review page [2] mentions that this add-on is a peer-to-peer vpn, not having its own dedicated servers that already makes it suspicious. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20250126133131/https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/urban-vpn/ https://web.archive.org/web/20250126133131/https://addons.mo... [2] https://www.vpnmentor.com/reviews/urban-vpn/ https://www.vpnmentor.com/reviews/urban-vpn/
- hexagonwin 9mo agoweird, the addon (for firefox) still works btw. can connect to china and get datacenter IPs..
- hathym 9mo agoctrl-f israel: 1 result found
- jsrozner 9mo agoTLDR: AI company uses AI to write blog post about abusive AI chrome extension (Yes it really is AI-written / AI-assisted. If your AI detectors don’t go off when you read it you need to be retrained.)
- kvam 9mo agoSome people have mentioned that this is a U.S incorporated company (Delaware). Recommend reading Moneyland by Oliver Bullough if you want to know more about the U.S role as the new shell company haven. The island states have been dethroned.
- saretup 9mo agoWith hardcoded flags like “sendClaudeMessages” and “sendChatgptMessages”, they weren’t even trying to hide it.
- ericand 9mo agoCan someone just AI all the privacy policies please and tell us who else is pranking?
- matt3210 9mo agoWhat would the fallout look like if too many people start to have horror stories about how much their life is destroyed by incriminating or down right nasty or wrong ai chat history. It'll suddenly become a tool where you can't be honest. If it's not already.
- tasuki 9mo ago> And then an uncomfortable thought: what if someone was reading all of this? > The thought didn't let go. As a security researcher, I have the tools to answer that question. What huh, no you don't! As a security researcher you should know better!
- tasuki 9mo ago> Exactly the kind of tool someone installs when they want to protect themselves online. No. When you want to increase your security, you install fewer tools. Each tool increases your exposure. Why is the security industry full of people who don't get this?
- brikym 9mo agoIt's ridiculous how many comments are being removed.
- ArtRichards 9mo agoIs this the same Google that is preventing us from installing unapproved software on our phones?
- raincole 9mo agoAm I just paranoid or open router is the next bomb ticking to a privacy explosion? What is their business model anyway?
- metaphorproj 9mo agoNote that in the profile of a model in Openrouter, under Data Policy, there is a statement as "Prompt Training". Some of model will clearly stated that prompt training is true, even for paid models.
- xeeeeeeeeeeenu 9mo ago>What is their business model anyway? They take a 5.5% fee whenever you buy credits. There's also a discount for opting-in to share your prompts for training.
- 4ndrewl 9mo ago"And then an uncomfortable thought: what if someone was reading all of this?" If you really are a security researcher then that's not true. You already know all this.
- jackfranklyn 9mo ago[flagged]
- hnbad 9mo agoA big problem is also that you can pretty much only grant permission for one specific site or all sites and this very much depends on which of those two options the extension uses. For example there's no need for the "inject custom JS or CSS into websites" extensions to need permission to read and write data on every single website you visit. If you only want to use them to make a few specific sites more accessible to you that doesn't mean you're okay with them touching your online banking. Especially when most of these already let you define specific URLs or patterns each rule/script should apply to. I understand that there are still vectors for data exfiltration when the same extension has permissions on two different sites and that "code injection as a service" is inherently risky (although cross-origin policies can already lock this down somewhat) but in 2025 I'd hope we could have a more granular permission model for browser extensions that actually supports sandboxing.
- valicord 9mo agoYou can grant access to a few specific sites (in chrome at least), it's just hidden in settings and you need to configure it manually.
- miguelspizza 9mo agoWe actually have this with the permissions API. The issue is everyone just opts for longer approval times and less intrusive UX with manifest level permissions. I agree though, runtime permissions should be the default
- nwellinghoff 9mo agoNice write up. It would be great if the authors could follow up with a detailed technical walk through of how to use the various tooling to figure out what an extension is really doing. Could one just feed the extension and a good prompt to claude to do this? Seems like automation CAN sniff this kind of stuff out pretty easily.
- chhxdjsj 9mo agoHow did I know this was an israeli company just by how unethical they are at scale?
- chhxdjsj 9mo agoAnd what are the odds that mossad are getting access to this data?
- hnbad 9mo agoIt would have been no less suprising to me had it been a US company but it certainly fits the cultural stereotype of callousness that particular country has been openly displaying in recent years.
- talhof8 9mo agoWell, you’d be surprised to discover that Koi is also an Israeli company, and they were the ones who even discovered this https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/syoe1xjslx https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/syoe1xjslx
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- torginus 9mo agoWasn't the whole coercion Google did around Manifest V3 in the name of security? How is it possible to have extensions this egregiously malicious in the new system?
- danielfalbo 9mo agoThe footer animation of koi.ai is so cool.
- dgellow 9mo agoDo we know for how much that type of content sells? Not that I'm interested in entering the market, but the economics of that kind of thing are always fascinating. How much are buyers willing to pay for AI conversations? I would expect the value to be pretty low
- pxtail 9mo agoLet's assume that people are discussing medical conditions in these conversations - I think that insurance companies would be pretty interested to get this kind of data in their hands.
- dgellow 9mo agoThe question isn’t if there is some interesting info in that data but if there are some actual buyers. Lots of interesting data exist, so what’s the value of AI chats?
- AznHisoka 9mo agoI doubt its the actual conversations but the aggregated insights that are valuable. Think: is my brand getting mentioned more in AI chats? Are people associating positive or negative feelings towards it? Are more people asking about this topic lately?
- dgellow 9mo agoSure, but are they willing to pay and if yes how much. There is a meaningful difference between « could be useful » and « valuable enough that we want to buy »
- hnbad 9mo agoThey say they remove information from the collected data. They aren't very explicit about what information they remove or not. They also seem to be feeding the data they collect right into the affiliated data broker company. There are two different markets for this kind of complex data: - Aggregate (demographic) data is useful for targeting, not just regular ads but also in-person outreach or even just identifying areas with a high density of potential customers; you can also use these insights to then categorize people in your own data set (e.g. when onboarding a new user you might cross-reference their details and find out they're high value just based on the "non-personal" data from the data broker that matches their profile). - Specific (personal) data is useful for companies like insurances to flag you for risks you wouldn't otherwise have to disclose or they might not be able to request disclosure of; because direct transfer of personal data is the most likely kind to run into privacy law issues this is now often obfuscated by feeding it into AI models (i.e. the AI learns to match the collected data at the data broker to the input data it receives from the data broker's customer but there is never an explicit connection between the two data sets so the data broker can claim it is anonymized/aggregated when in practice it's still granular enough for the AI model to be able to categorize you based on seemingly spurious associations). Note that the fist case overlaps with the second because "aggregate" usually still means that when looking at a new dataset (i.e. data collected from one person) you can say with some confidence which pile of aggregated data it fits in even if that pile doesn't contain an exact match due to anonymization/pseudonymization. Also note that this means there isn't really any feasible way to "aggregate" data in such a way it can no longer be argued to be subject to the data subject rights of the GDPR unless the data is fully isolated (e.g. total number of monthly visitors of an entire website by year).
- murillians 9mo ago“ A few weeks ago, I was wrestling with a major life decision. Like I've grown used to doing, I opened Claude” Is this where we’re at with AI?
- Miraltar 9mo agoDelegating life decisions to AI is obviously quite stupid but it can really help lay out and question your thoughts even if it's obviously biased.
- skywhopper 9mo agoA certain type of person loves nothing more than to spill their guts to anyone who will listen. They don’t see their conversational partners as other equally aware entities—they are just a sounding board for whatever is in this person's head. So LLMs are incredibly appealing to these folks. LLMs never get tired or zone out or make snarky responses. Add in chatbots’ obsequious enabling, and these folks are instantly hooked.
- haar 9mo agoDo you just mean external vs internal processing/thinking?
- nacozarina 9mo agoPeople used to cast lots to make major life decisions. Putting a token predictor in the mix — especially one incapable of any actual understanding — seems like a natural evolution. Absolved of burden of navigating our noisy, incomplete and dissonant thoughts, we can surrender ourselves to the oracle and just obey.
- lionkor 9mo agoYes, but its incredibly dangerous when the operator of the token predictor can give you, personally, different behavior and can influence your decisions even more directly than before.
- meindnoch 9mo ago
- RataNova 9mo agoIf the business model isn't obvious, you are the product
- phkahler 9mo agoWhy is a security researcher using a Free VPN? The standard wisdom is "if its free, you're the product". So you're going to proxy all your sensitive traffic through a free thing? Its not great to trust paid services with your data, nevermind free stuff. Sometimes knowing tech makes us think we're somehow better and can bypass high level wisdom.
- sothatsit 9mo agoThey are not. They found it by searching for extensions that had the capability to exfiltrate data. > We asked Wings, our agentic-AI risk engine, to scan for browser extensions with the capability to read and exfiltrate conversations from AI chat platforms.
- hnbad 9mo agoNote that this is a pretty blatant GDPR violation and you should report this to the local data protection agency if you are a EU resident and care about this (especially if you've used this extension). Their privacy policy claims the data collection is consent-based and that the app settings also let you revoke this consent. According to the article, the latter isn't the case and the user is never informed of the extent of the collection and the risk of sensitive or specially protected personal information (e.g. sexual orientation) being part of the data they're collecting. Their privacy policy states the collected data is filtered to remove this kind of information but that's irrelevant because processing necessarily happens after collection and the GDPR already applies at the start of that pipeline. If Urban VPN is indeed closely affiliated with the data broker, a GDPR fine might also affect that company too given how these fines work. There is a high bar for the kind of misconduct that would result in a fine but it seems plausible that they're being knowingly and deliberately deceptive and engaging in widespread data collection that is intentionally invasive and covert. That would be a textbook example for the kind of behavior the GDPR is meant to target with fines. The same likely applies to the other extensions mentioned in the article. Yes, "if the product is free, you are the product" but that is exactly why the GDPR exists. The problem isn't that they're harvesting user data but that they're being intentionally deceptive and misleading in their statements about this, claim they are using consent as the legal basis without having obtained it[0], and they're explicitly contradicting themselves in their claims ("we're not collecting sensitive information that would need special consideration but if we do we make sure to find it and remove it before sharing your information but don't worry because it's mostly used in aggregate except when it isn't"). Just because you except some bruising when picking up martial arts as a hobby doesn't mean your sparring partner gets to pummel your face in when you're already knocked out. [0]: Because "consent" seems to be a hard concept for some people to grasp: it's literally analogous to what you'd want to establish before having sex with someone (though to be fair: the laws are much more lenient about unclear consent for sex because it's less reasonable to expect it to be documented with a paper trail like you can easily do for software). I'll try to keep it SFW but my place of work is not your place of work so think carefully if you want to copy this into your next Powerpoint presentation. Does your prospective sexual partner have any reason to strongly believe that they can't refuse your advances because doing so would limit their access to something else (e.g. you took them on a date in your car and they can't afford a taxi/uber and public transport isn't available so they rely on you to get back home, aka "the implication")? Then they can't give you voluntary consent because you're (intentionally or not) pressuring them into it. The same goes if you make it much harder for them to refuse than to agree (I can't think of a sex analogy for this because this seems obvious in direct human interactions but somehow some people still think hiding "reject all non-essential" is an option you are allowed to hide between two more steps when the "accept all" button is right there even if the law explicitly prohibits these shenanigans). Is your prospective sexual partner underage or do they appear extremely naive (e.g. you suspect they've never had any sex ed and don't know what having sex might entail or the risks involved like pregnancy, STIs or, depending on the acts, potential injuries)? Then they probably can't give you informed consent because they don't fully understand what they're consenting to. For data processing this would be failure to disclose the nature of the collection/processing/storage that's about to happen. And no, throwing the entire 100 page privacy policy at them with a consent dialog at the start hardly counts the same way throwing a biology textbook at a minor doesn't make them able to consent. Is your prospective sexual partner giving you mixed signals but seems to be generally okay with the idea of "taking things further"? Then you're still missing specific consent and better take things one step at a time checking in on them if they're still comfortable with the direction you're taking things before you decide to raw dog their butt (even if they might turn out to be into that). Or in software terms, it's probably better to limit the things you seek consent for to what's currently happening for the user (e.g. a checkbox on a contact form that informs them what you actually intend to do with that data specifically) rather than try to get it all in one big consent modal at the start - this also comes with the advantage that you can directly demonstrate when and how the specific consent relevant to that data was obtained when later having to justify how that data was used in case something goes wrong. Is your now-active sexual partner in a position where they can no longer tell you to stop (e.g. because they're tied up and ball-gagged)? Then the consent you did obtain isn't revokable (and thus again invalid) because they need to be able to opt out (this is what "safe words" are for and why your dentist tells you to raise your hand where they can see it if you need them to stop during a procedure - given that it's hard to talk with someone's hands in your mouth). In software this means withdrawing consent (or "opting out") should be as easy as it was to give it in the first place - an easy solution is having a "privacy settings" screen easily accessible in the same place as the privacy policy and other mandatory information that at the very least covers everything you stuffed in that consent dialog I told you not to use, as well as anything you tucked away in other forms downstream. This also gives you a nice place to link to at every opportunity to keep your user at ease and relaxed to make the journey more enjoyable for both of you.
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- meindnoch 9mo agoOnly those users that were stupid enough to "converse" with their chatbot.
- yoan9224 9mo agoThis is exactly why we need more transparency in analytics tools. When building products that handle user data, the "free" model almost always means you're the product. The scary part is these extensions had Google's "Featured" badge. Manual review clearly isn't enough when companies can update code post-approval. We need continuous monitoring, not just one-time vetting. For anyone building privacy-focused tools: making your data collection transparent and your business model clear upfront is the only way to build trust. Users are getting savvier about this.
- AznHisoka 9mo agoI wish Congress spent as much time fighting about issues like this vs trying to break up Google. This is far more impact. Articles like this do a decent job of bringing awareness, but we all know Google will do absolutely nothing
- smallerfish 9mo agoSomewhat ironically, this article has significant amounts of AI writing in it. (I've done a lot of AI writing in my own sites, and have been learning how to smother "the voice". This article doesn't do a good job of smothering.)
- cmiles8 9mo agoIf the product is free, you are the product.
- Rakshath_1 9mo ago[flagged]
- yalogin 9mo agoWhy would one expect privacy with a vpn? That too a free one? With the web all traffic is encrypted point to point, which means individual sites could compromise your privacy but there is no single funnel to lose all your data. VPN is exactly that! All data goes through a single funnel and they can target anything they want
- estimator7292 9mo agoBecause VPNs are exclusively and heavily marketed and sold as magical turnkey solutions to privacy, encryption, hair loss, and more!
- cryptoegorophy 9mo agoPro tip - never install any browser extensions. Avoid like a plague. I had a couple installed that were “legitimate” and I have direct evidence of them leaking/selling my browsing data. Just avoid.
- jmward01 9mo agoThis is digital assault of 8m people and should be treated that way.
- antipaul 9mo agoI wouldn't be surprised if this was done by one of those AI companies themselves! Remember FaceBook x Onavo? "Facebook used a Virtual Private Network (VPN) application it acquired, called Onavo Protect, as a surveillance tool to monitor user activity on competing apps and websites"
- lionkor 9mo ago> We asked Wings, our agentic-AI risk engine I hate to be that guy, but I am having a difficult time verifying any of this. How likely is it that this is entirely hallucinated? Can anyone independently verify this?
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo agoThese converstions can be used to train a competing AI
- jukkat 9mo agoWhy these browser extensions cannot live in a guarded sandbox? Extensions are given full access to whatever is available on any page. I had legacy React developer tools and Redux DevTools installed for years. What a great attack vector.
- ttldlinhtm 9mo agoI think using AI is very helpful today but if the data is selt for HR it's very bad