What is more interesting is the reaction from the developer himself. He seems to be completely unimpressed by the criticism. Noting that one permits Chrome extensions to do stuff, and they would have seen this permission the extension required when they updated or installed it.
Furthermore, he is quoted as joking about how he could have sold the extension to someone to get your passwords and whatnot (but ensures us that he hasn't done so).
He asks specifically if he has broken some rules in Google Chrome's terms of service, where another user replies with quotations from the ToS. He barks at that saying his extension is allowed to do what he does, because his extension does reveal exactly what it does, if you read its permissions carefully.
Although, I cannot confirm whether that is true, but that's what he is saying.
I have no idea what he is up to; but aren't extensions supposed to be reviewed if they in the extension catalogue?
He does indicate the user gives the OK to 'access all data on all websites' - like most extensions do, come to think of it. I do think things like that should be more fine-grained, and/or that developers have to indicate /why/ they need that access.
Yeah, seems like they should maybe institute some type of manual review for any type of "global" permissions. It would impede the well-behaving apps that legitimately need global permissions, but it might be worth it.
Furthermore, he is quoted as joking about how he could have sold the extension to someone to get your passwords and whatnot (but ensures us that he hasn't done so).