Researchers has discovered a series of privacy breaches by Web Of Trust (WOT) – one of the top privacy and security browser extensions used by more than 140 Million online users to help keep them safe online. This innocent looking browser add-on has been caught collecting browsing history of millions of users and selling them to third-parties for making money.
Your IP address, geo-location, the type of device, operating system, and browser you use, the date and time, Web addresses, and browser usage are all collected, but they are in “non-identifiable” format – according to the WOT Privacy Policy. However it is found that it is very easy to link the anonymized data to its individual user.
This investigation was done by German television channel NDR (Norddeutscher Rundfunk) and they also focused on just a small data sample of around 50 WOT users and were able to retrieve a lot of data, which includes:
- Account name
- Mailing address
- Shopping habits
- Travel plans
- Possible illnesses
- Sexual preferences
- Drug consumption
- Confidential company information
- Ongoing police investigations
- Browser surfing activity including all sites visited
This data belonged to just 50 users, and WOT has more than 140 Million users. Now you can imagine why the whole matter is of huge concern. It is recommended that the WOT extension should be immediately uninstalled. WOT also has a mobile app that will not be immune to this data collection.