Delete these Chrome extensions, Facebook says they are stealing your personal data

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When Facebook publicly comes out and says someone other than their company is stealing your personal data, you should probably listen. And that’s exactly what’s happening.

The company is suing four Google Chrome browser extensions, alleging that the extensions were “scraping” Facebook user profiles and collecting personal information not related to Facebook. Here’s how the extensions did it, according to Facebook:

“If the user visited the Facebook website, the browser extensions were programmed to scrape their name, user ID, gender, relationship status, age group and other information related to their account,”

Obviously, this doesn’t mesh with Facebook’s terms of service. Not to mention, it’s a violation of a Portuguese data-protection law, which is where Facebook is filing the lawsuit.

As for the extensions, these are the culprits:

• Blue Messenger
• Emoji keyboard
• Green Messenger
• Web for Instagram plus DM

Don’t bother clicking on any of these extensions. Google removed them from the Chrome Store. All you will get when visiting the page is a 404 page. What you need to do is check and see if you have any of them installed in Chrome. And if you do, delete them immediately. Facebook said that these extensions “were malicious and contained hidden computer code that functioned as spyware.”

Although none of these claims made by Facebook have been proven in court, it’s probably safe to uninstall these extensions if you have them installed in Chrome.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• WhatsApp really wants you to know that it isn’t giving all of your information to Facebook
• Facebook is removing all references to “Stop the Steal”
• Facebook is removing the infamous “Like” button from public pages
• It seems Facebook is still working on smart glasses with “lots of functionality”

Kevin Raposo

Kevin is KnowTechie's founder and executive editor. With over 15 years of blogging experience in the tech industry, Kevin has transformed what was once a passion project into a full-blown tech news publication. Shoot him an email at kevin@knowtechie.com or find him on Mastodon or Post.