“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, who began documenting these solicitations on GitHub two years ago, at the time explained, "The main reason I continue to maintain this extension is because I can hardly trust others to not fall for one of these offers.
That’s why I’m avoiding any extension I know I really don’t need.
I’ve already burned myself once, when Nano Defender sold out and turned into a cookie-stealing malware. By the time it was one of few adblockers that were not being blocked by adblock killers. They’ve pushed a malware update through the Chrome web store, and started exploiting stolen cookies immediately.
It was a difficult day, where I had to explain to few of my exes that someone hacked their Instagram account due to an ad-blocker I’ve set up for them when we were dating few years ago.