Three malicious VPN extensions on the Chrome Web Store infected 1.5 million devices before being removed by Google
Remember guys if the product is free, your data is what they’re selling.
Can someone explain to me how VPN works? Been on several vacations where I downloaded 3-5 different ones. Last vacation was 2 weeks ago in Egypt. I tried 4 different VPNs to try and watch TV from back home and none worked.
more info: The Cashback Extension Killer | ReasonLabs
zero to 1m installs since August is pretty dang impressive. they apparently targeted former bloc countries.
The malware reportedly targeted over 100 legitimate cashback extensions, including Avast SafePrice, AVG SafePrice, Honey: Automatic Coupons & Rewards, LetyShops, Megabonus, AliRadar Shopping Assistant, Yandex.Market Adviser, ChinaHelper, and Backlit.
well that’s a new monetization method to me. kinda miss blackhat stuff sometimes. wonder how much they profited.
Is there a reason one would use Chrome over Firefox?
Sorry but you have to be a special kind of stupid if you’re suddenly have a VPN browser extension installed, after you got a cracked game via torrent, and are not alarmed.
Wont Google be charged for that? Surely there is some clause for penalty over here.
And if it’s a paid product there’s nothing stopping them from profiting off your data as well.
That’s a very unnuanced view, and also not true. Some free things are just free. Some are supported by genetic ads. Some are supported by ads via a network like Facebook or Google. Some may sell data.
If you didn’t buy the product, you ARE the product
It’s simple as routing all your traffic to some server based out of the country you’re connecting to.
I’m assuming you downloaded free VPNs and they’re always shitty since their IP addresses are shared used by plenty others before you.
Streaming/TV Companies detect vpn pretty easily by monitoring the traffic’s origin or inspecting the IP packet and if they receive a lot of traffic from a single source, it’s pretty obvious that it’s not just “someone” watching and it’s probably a VPN server sending them a barrage of requests.
You’ll need some paid VPN like Mullvad, it’s pretty cheap in general.
Any good vpn you should be paying for. I use Nordvpn
If you’re going to use one, don’t use the free ones. You can usually get a VPN service pretty cheap and the good ones are no log with external audits you can view. Nord VPN is a big one, I use proton vpn.
Without a VPN :
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Your phone/laptop: “Hey internet! show me Netflix, oh and btw, i am in Egypt!”
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so now netflix know that you are in Egypt, and they will give you Egyptian content.
With a VPN :
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Your phone/laptop: “Hey Internet! can you tell that VPN company to ask one of their agent to ask the internet to show me Netflix ? oh and make sure you put me through the American VPN agent”
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so now Netflix will give back the american content to the american VPN agent
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and the agent will forward that American content to you, despite you being in Egypt.
Think of this as an ELI5 version of it.
and all those “redundancies” in the phrases are intentional and are the core reason behind why VPN “slow down” your internet, its the difference between talking to someone directly, versus asking a friend to tell a friend to tell that person, and then the person also respond to you through these friends.
I hope it helps.
PS:
This is why VPN claiming to be a “security” tool is also bullshit, sure they add a little bit more work, but any well-run dictatorship won’t have any issue tracking you no matter what VPN you are using, so yeah, just use them to bypass stupid media censorship, and if you can find a DNS provider instead of a VPN, its better to use those because they won’t slowdown “your bandwidth”, they only effect your latency.
(VPN don’t slow down your bandwidth, they just make you rely on a 3rd party server to give you ANYTHING from the internet, so no matter how fast your internet, you will be limited by the speed of that 3rd part VPN server )
Think of it like mail. Your mail has to go through several hands before it gets to you. Each hand cannot generally see what is in the envelope, but they can see that you are requesting and receiving information from “YouTube”. You internet provider and several others log and track all this info for both legitimate and illegitimate reasons (mostly illegitimate).
Now with a VPN you send all your mail to a 3rd party we will call “John”. All your mail goes to John first, and then John puts your mail in an envelope and sends to your house. Now your internet provider and others can only see you are receiving mail from John. They cannot see who the mail is from, etc.
That is a simplified explanation anyway.
It’s easier if you just look it up on Wikipedia.
I use Firefox at home and Chrome at work, since it works better for google apps like docs, sheets, etc.
But I never login to my personal google account at work.
Some webpages might not display or function properly on certain browsers so it’s good to have multiple
If you want to make use of their data collection. If I need to search for something local, do some shopping, or banking, then Chrome-Google is a lot easier to navigate than Firefox-Duckduckgo
Many sites are not officially written to support Firefox, just Chrome and Safari due to them being the big two.
The disparities between browsers is way less now than it used to be, but there are still quirks.
So you might use Chrome for those few cases.