“Actors who are asking me to add some tracking code are mostly interested in reselling users’ data,” Anashkin said. “Actors who want to purchase it outright will stuff it with malware depending on their level of greed: hijacking affiliate links, tampering with search results, showing popups with shady websites, etc.”

Anashkin’s experience appears to be fairly common. Developers have discussed these solicitations in online forums and several have written blog posts about selling extensions or partnership offers.

  • monobot@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Yes, criminal activity is everywhere, problem is we haven’t yet forbid selling of users data.

    • N4CHEM@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      And it’s very unlikely to happen, since our governments are very interested in spying us / buying our data.