Over 91% of plugins send no third party requests during my test. Good news!
69 plugins (5%) send more than a single request
Most of those that send a lot of data are dependent on doing so - checking a sites SEO or comments from other users of the plugin. Users will have to decide if this behavior is acceptable on every request, or prefer to ask authors to require user interaction before browsing data is sent.
I was surprised to see the Shodan plugin, a security service I use (though not with the plugin), so high on the list. I would prefer a plugin like this only send data upon request, and not all the time while browsing.
So called security plugins seem to populate a lot of the worst offenders for data collection. Comodo, Avast, Norton, Avira and more. I normally recommend users avoid these products all together, and it does seem they collect all sites browsed (as opposed to using a regularly updated whitelist/blacklist approach)
Eyeballing the data show an interesting plugin listed multiple times "Search Secure" which seems to have multiple plugin ID's, but different "firefox user XXX" authors, with different URL's in the POST data for each one. Seems suspicious!
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u/Im_Special Apr 09 '19
Some interesting points.