Google Pulls Two Adware Extensions From Chrome Store
infosecurity-magazine | January 21, 2014
The incident demonstrates the downside of automatic updates. Chrome itself is a pioneer of the process, where the browser is automatically and silently updated to ensure users always have the latest and fully patched version. This is a huge boon to Chrome users; but the principle only works where the user has trust in the supplier. With both of these extensions, the supplier changed hands when they were bought by an ad-serving company, who then used the automatic updating facility to change their functionality.