Some of these extensions are more straightforward once the user installs them and they are listed under the installed extensions.īut others are consistent in their lies even after they have been installed, which makes it even harder to find out which one is responsible for the search hijack. Why? Users are more likely to trust an extension with limited warnings or when permissions are explained to them.īut what is the use of these informative prompts if they only give you half the story? In this case, the PopStop extension doesn’t just read your browsing history, as the pop-up explains, but it also hijacks your search results. It already is habit for browser extensions to only ask for permissions needed to function properly up front-then ask for additional permissions later on after installing. The install prompt in the webstore is supposed to give you accurate information about the permissions the extension you are about to install requires. This extension, called PopStop, claims it can only read your browsing history. Recently, we came across a family of search hijackers that are deceptive about the permissions they are going to use in their install prompt. This is especially true because it can be hard to find out which of the Chrome extensions is the culprit if the browser starts acting up.
Granted, they are not hard to remove, but having to do it over and over is a nuisance.
“But I checked the permissions before I installed this pop-up-blocker-it said nothing about changing my searches,” my dad retorts after I scold him for installing yet another search-hijacking Chrome extension.
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