Interestingly, the AdblockPrime extension targeting iOS users could be installed directly from adblockprimeco when people visited using Safari. Both the Block Site and Poper Blocker Firefox extensions were also no longer available from Mozilla. Meshkov, however, said on Wednesday that his searches showed that the Block Site Android app was still available in Play. Attempts to contact company representatives weren’t successful, and no one responded to emails sent to the addresses included in the privacy policies.Ī search by Ars showed that none of the offending Android apps or Chrome extensions were available in Play or the Chrome Web Store. Meshkov said his research showed that Big Star Labs was incorporated in 2017. Later versions of the same apps, by contrast, contain heavily obfuscated code that sends complete browsing histories. Earlier versions of some of the apps contain no tracking code. The privacy policies are especially opaque because they appear in images rather than text that can be more easily indexed by search engines. He said all of the Android apps link to privacy policies similar to this one, which mentions Big Star Labs by name. Meshkov told Ars that he believes all of the wares were acquired by a company calling itself Big Star Labs. Chrome extension with 2,280,000+ users.Clean Droid - an Android app with 500,000+ installs.AppLock | Privacy Protector - an Android app with 500,000+ installs.Battery Saver - an Android app with 1,000,000+ installs.Speed BOOSTER - an Android app with 5,000,000+ installs.It's hard to estimate the users count as it is not distributed via the App Store. Chrome extension with 1,440,000+ users.Īn ad blocker for iOS.Even if you do not happen to visit such pages, there is still a high chance of exposing your real identity.” “It can be straightforward, for instance, there is no ambiguity in who can visit this page. “There are numerous ways of discovering your real identity from observing your browsing history,” Meshkov wrote. AdGuard cofounder Andrey Meshkov said in the post that the extensions and apps make a list of every exact address of every page visited and combine it with a unique identifier he believes is generated when the extension or app is first installed. The snooping wares affect both Android and iOS users, as well as those who installed Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox extensions, according to a blog post published Tuesday by AdGuard, a developer of ad blockers and privacy tools. Now, researchers have uncovered a host of apps and browser extensions downloaded more than 11 million times that keep a list of every website ever visited and send it to servers operated by the developers. People often use ad blockers, disk-cleaners, and similar utilities to stop online trackers from monitoring their online activities.
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