WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — Google has removed an add-on of the popular Google Chrome web browser claimed to contain malware that intercepted over one million Swedish Internet users' profile data and search patterns, the company told Sputnik on Wednesday.
“When we automatically detect items containing malware or learn of them through user reports, we remove them from the Chrome Web Store. To ensure our users have the best possible experience when using Chrome we will remove any extensions from the Web Store that contain malware or purport to do one thing and do another."
Several Swedish companies had data leaked, the newspaper said without revealing the names of the organizations for security reasons.
Searching for the program on Google’s Web Store on Wednesday confirms the add-on has been removed by Google.
Although the browser add-on states that it collects anonymous statistics of visits, the original code does not include the malware. The spy code was seen to be split into several parts to make it more difficult to detect.
It was previously unreported to police, as law enforcement had few resources to investigate this kind of incident, Dagens Nyheter said.
