We had a browser extension for our product. A couple times a month someone would clone it, add some data scraping or other malware to it, and re-upload it with the same or similar name.

We set up automated searches to find them. After reporting it could take weeks to get them removed, some times longer. That’s for extensions with clear copyright problems!

The extensions may not be breaking any rules of the extension stores if they’re just scraping a website. Many of the extensions on the list are literally designed to do that as their headline feature.

If you think sending data from a page to a server would disqualify an extension from an extension store then think again. Many of the plugins listed even have semi-plausible reasons for uploading the scraped data, like the “anti-Zionist tagger” extension on the list or the ones that claim to blur things that are anti-Islam. Manufacturing a reason to send data to their servers gives them cover.