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Urban VPN Proxy Chrome Extension Harvests AI Chat Data from Millions

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2 unique sources, 2 articles

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The Urban VPN Proxy Chrome extension, featured on the Google Chrome Web Store with over six million users, has been found to silently intercept and collect AI chatbot conversations, including prompts and responses, from platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. The extension, updated in July 2025, uses hard-coded settings to enable this data harvesting by default, routing conversation data to remote servers for analysis and monetization. The extension's developer, Urban Cyber Security Inc., shares this data with an affiliated company, BIScience, which uses it for advertising and brand monitoring purposes. The extension also carries a 'Featured' badge, implying endorsement by Google and Microsoft, despite the privacy concerns. Researchers from Koi discovered that the extension injects code into supported AI websites and overrides standard browser network functions to capture conversations. This functionality was introduced in version 5.5.0 of the extension, released on July 9, 2025, and affects over eight million users across Chrome and Edge.

Timeline

  1. 15.12.2025 19:46 2 articles · 1d ago

    Urban VPN Proxy Extension Found Harvesting AI Chat Data

    The Urban VPN Proxy Chrome extension, with over six million users, was discovered to silently intercept and collect AI chatbot conversations, including prompts and responses, from platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. The extension, updated in July 2025, uses hard-coded settings to enable this data harvesting by default, routing conversation data to remote servers for analysis and monetization. The extension's developer, Urban Cyber Security Inc., shares this data with an affiliated company, BIScience, which uses it for advertising and brand monitoring purposes. Researchers from Koi discovered that the extension injects code into supported AI websites and overrides standard browser network functions to capture conversations. This functionality was introduced in version 5.5.0 of the extension, released on July 9, 2025, and affects over eight million users across Chrome and Edge.

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