Urban VPN Proxy Chrome Extension Harvests AI Chat Data from Millions
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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.
Timeline
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15.12.2025 19:46 1 articles · 8h 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.
Show sources
- Featured Chrome Browser Extension Caught Intercepting Millions of Users' AI Chats — thehackernews.com — 15.12.2025 19:46
Information Snippets
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Urban VPN Proxy extension has 6 million users on Chrome and 1.3 million on Edge.
First reported: 15.12.2025 19:461 source, 1 articleShow sources
- Featured Chrome Browser Extension Caught Intercepting Millions of Users' AI Chats — thehackernews.com — 15.12.2025 19:46
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The extension was updated on July 9, 2025, to enable AI data harvesting by default.
First reported: 15.12.2025 19:461 source, 1 articleShow sources
- Featured Chrome Browser Extension Caught Intercepting Millions of Users' AI Chats — thehackernews.com — 15.12.2025 19:46
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The extension intercepts and exfiltrates user prompts, chatbot responses, conversation identifiers, timestamps, session metadata, and AI platform/model used.
First reported: 15.12.2025 19:461 source, 1 articleShow sources
- Featured Chrome Browser Extension Caught Intercepting Millions of Users' AI Chats — thehackernews.com — 15.12.2025 19:46
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Data is sent to two remote servers: analytics.urban-vpn[.]com and stats.urban-vpn[.]com.
First reported: 15.12.2025 19:461 source, 1 articleShow sources
- Featured Chrome Browser Extension Caught Intercepting Millions of Users' AI Chats — thehackernews.com — 15.12.2025 19:46
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Urban VPN's privacy policy, updated on June 25, 2025, mentions collecting AI prompts and responses for Safe Browsing and marketing analytics.
First reported: 15.12.2025 19:461 source, 1 articleShow sources
- Featured Chrome Browser Extension Caught Intercepting Millions of Users' AI Chats — thehackernews.com — 15.12.2025 19:46
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BIScience, an affiliated ad intelligence firm, receives raw (non-anonymized) data from Urban VPN.
First reported: 15.12.2025 19:461 source, 1 articleShow sources
- Featured Chrome Browser Extension Caught Intercepting Millions of Users' AI Chats — thehackernews.com — 15.12.2025 19:46
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Three other extensions from the same publisher also exhibit identical AI harvesting functionality, totaling over eight million users.
First reported: 15.12.2025 19:461 source, 1 articleShow sources
- Featured Chrome Browser Extension Caught Intercepting Millions of Users' AI Chats — thehackernews.com — 15.12.2025 19:46
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The extensions carry a 'Featured' badge, implying endorsement by Google and Microsoft.
First reported: 15.12.2025 19:461 source, 1 articleShow sources
- Featured Chrome Browser Extension Caught Intercepting Millions of Users' AI Chats — thehackernews.com — 15.12.2025 19:46