Google have finally announced the long overdue changes by introducing new rules for Chrome extension developers that will limit the amounts of data they are allowed to access.
As of beginning of 2019 Google Chrome had almost 70 per cent market share. That make it the most prominent web browser world wide. (Firefox has less than 10 per cent usage and Internet Explorer makes up a measly five-and-a-half per cent.)
However, a serious concern rises from a dominance on this scale. For whatever security hack or when things go wrong the results can be catastrophically huge. The concerns were founded due to Google Chrome extensions, which have been found housing malware, assisting to spread crypto scams and slurping-up user data.
At last, Google has decided to tackle these concerns and to do something about its rogue extensions. The company is putting in place measure that clamp down on what information the creators of an extension can access. The changes it is making will also apply to Google Drive and are long overdue.
“We’re requiring extensions to only request access to the appropriate data needed to implement their features,” Ben Smith, Google’s vice president of engineering wrote in a blog post.
Basically, what this would mean to the average user?
The new measure will mean that when any user is installing a new Chrome extension, the creators are no longer able to request too much of your personal information in exchange for the download. For example, an extension that claims to operate a spell check what you write in your web browser shouldn’t need to be allowed access to your location.
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