Hover Zoom: Removed or Compromised

What happened

Hover Zoom, an image-magnifying extension with millions of users, was caught quietly bundling code that tracked users' browsing and inserted affiliate links into the pages they visited — monetizing user activity without clear consent. The behavior was added through updates after the extension had already built a large audience.

What affected users could do

Users who relied on it had to uninstall and pick a magnifier without bundled tracking. It is a textbook example of why a once-clean extension can change after an update or a change of hands.

Source

How-To Geek ↗ — every entry on this tracker is verified against its source before publishing.

← Back to the full list of Removed & Compromised Extensions. Extensions changing their permissions short of removal are on our policy-change alerts.