‘Automatic 4K/HD for Youtube’ extension removed from the Chrome Web Store for spamming users with unwanted ads

• The extension was previously used by over 4 million Chrome users to improve the video quality on YouTube.
• The popup ads appear shortly after the installation of the extension.

A popular browser extension named ‘Automatic 4K/HD for YouTube’ has been removed by Google from the Chrome Web Store following its spurious activities. The extension was found spamming users with unwanted pop-up advertisements.

The extension was used by over 4 million Chrome users to improve the video quality on YouTube.

Capabilities

The extension started showing unwanted popups to their userbase, starting sometime last week, ZDNet reported. The popups behaved as adware, showing popups from another Chrome extension named ‘Adblocker for Chrome - NoAds’, developed by the developer named Adblocker.

The popups appear shortly after the installation of the extension. They are visible in the GIF format and appear at regular intervals. The popup ads abuse Chrome’s ability to show desktop notifications.

Dissatisfied users left poor reviews on the extension’s page on the Chrome Web Store, warning others about the latest behavior of the extension.

In the past, a number of browser extensions and plugins have either been purchased from their original developers or even hijacked to conduct nefarious activities on victims’ computers. For instance, an ad blocker extension can be used by hackers to read and change all the data of a website a user visits.

Users are advised to disable the extension from their Chrome browsers to prevent any other abuse.