Popular Google Chrome extensions are constantly tracking you by default
> more often than not, the extensions are also embedding third-party scripts which are gathering all your browser traffic.<p>As someone who writes a lot of chrome extensions, I find that annoying, not to mention a bit insulting. Please provide the complete list of bad behaving extensions instead of implying we're mostly writing extensions to lure users into a trap.<p>There are so many cool things you can do with chrome extensions, which are largely unexplored yet. Actually, it reminds me the state of javascript in the early 2000. It was not uncommon then too to say javascript developers were only in to write malwares and javascript should be avoided as much as possible. What would the web look like today if we listened to them?<p>Now, the state of chrome permissions is indeed very bad. It is very restrictive by essence (you wouldn't have that many restrictions writing a desktop app, and you could do way more harm), but it makes everything looks suspicious. Do you need to access something to build a feature? Now user, when installing the extension, will catalog all the bad things you could do with this permission.<p>Worst part is, the perimeter of permissions is often poorly delimited. Do you want user to be able to use an extension that enhance their experience on a website of their choice? You have to ask to be able to edit just any website. You often reach the "this extension can read all your browser history" state when you couldn't care less.<p>I would gladly pay google to review my extension code and mark it as trusted. The confusion between good and bad developers must stop.