Web Surfers, Beware! 'No One Will Try to Blacklist Unwanted Plugins'

© Fotolia / ElnurIT-companies will not try to block unwanted add-ons for browsers, including those spying on you.
IT-companies will not try to block unwanted add-ons for browsers, including those spying on you. - Sputnik International
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IT-companies will not try to block unwanted add-ons for browsers, including those spying on you, Denis Legezo, a malware analyst at Kaspersky Lab, told Sputnik following revelations that a sneaky peace of malware spied on a million Swedish web surfers using Google's Chrome browser.

More than a million Swedish web surfers have reportedly been exposed to spyware on their personal computers through an add-on specifically targeting Google's Chrome browser - Sputnik International
Not So Incognito: One Million Swedish PCs Hit by Google Chrome Spyware
On Tuesday, a Swedish newspaper broke the news that the Webpage Screenshot program, an add-on to Google Chrome, was not only making screenshots and saving them on the computer but also sending users' browsing history to a server in the United States.

"As it seems from the description, we are dealing with some sort of spyware in the shell of browser plugin. As usual such plugins can't be labelled as classic malware – most likely it's the additional toolbars or scripts for changing the default search engine," Legezo said.

The add-on has been removed from the Google's Web Store. The company is tightening its policy regarding plugins, according to the malware analyst.

"But as far as the enormous and constantly growing number of browser plugins is concerned, no company will even try to blacklist the herds of unwanted plugins."

The situation gets even worse since no antivirus can block software like this, according to the malware analyst. But there is an efficient and time-saving solution to this particular problem – whitelisting and blacklisting applications.

"The first one blocks every program not on the list of permitted apps, while the second one permits all the software except the blacklisted programs," Legezo explained.

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