Facebook Says These Chrome Extensions Steal Your Personal Data - Delete Now

Facebook Says These Chrome Extensions Steal Your Personal Data - Delete Now

[Facebook is suing the makers of four Google Chrome browser extensions for "scraping," or harvesting, information from Facebook user profiles and also collecting personal information unrelated to Facebook.

"When users accessed Facebook's website, the browser extension was programmed to scrape the user's name, user ID, gender, relationship status, age range, and other information related to their account," Facebook stated in an official post in an official post.

This is a violation of Facebook's terms of service and a violation of Portugal's data protection laws. The lawsuit was filed in Portugal by both Facebook and its European subsidiary based in Ireland.

Extensions that are still in the Chrome Web Store and can be installed include:

These extensions were "malicious and contained hidden computer code that acted like spyware," Facebook said.

It is unclear whether these extensions are still collecting user data. Three of them were updated in December, while the emoji keyboard has not been updated since July.

Just to be safe, you may want to disable these extensions if you have them installed. Click on the icon that looks like a puzzle piece in the upper right corner of the Chrome browser on your desktop and scroll down to "Manage Extensions. Check to see if any of the above extensions are installed and either switch them off or remove them.

All four extensions are owned and operated by a company called Oink and Stuff, which, according to its website, makes extensions for Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera browsers, as well as an Android app.

According to the Chrome Web Store and Google Play store, Oink and Stuff is based in Myanmar, aka Burma, but Facebook's lawsuit was filed in a Portuguese court against two individuals not named by Facebook.

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