News

AI Chrome Extensions Can Read What You Type and See What You Browse, Privacy Study Says

• By John K. Waters
• 01/27/2026

A new study from data privacy firm Incogni says many popular AI-powered Google Chrome extensions collect user data and request permissions that could expose sensitive information, even when the tools are marketed as everyday helpers for writing, translation, note-taking, and coding.

Incogni said it reviewed 442 Chrome extensions it classified as AI-powered and found 52% collected at least one type of user data. Nearly one in three (29%) collected personally identifiable information, including personal communications, location data, and website content, the company said.

Two of the most widely downloaded tools in the study, Grammarly and QuillBot, were singled out as the most potentially privacy-damaging among extensions with more than 2 million downloads each, based on the scope of data collection and the permissions required, Incogni said.

Browser extensions are small software add-ons that can change how a web browser behaves, often with broad access to webpages and user activity. Incogni said users may assume an extension listed in the Chrome Web Store is inherently safe, but warned that extensions can exfiltrate sensitive data, modify what a user sees on a webpage, and, in some cases, inject text, including code, into input fields.

To build its rankings, Incogni said researchers examined permissions each extension requested, developers' data-collection disclosures in the Chrome Web Store, and two risk scores—risk impact and risk likelihood—drawn from chrome-stats.com.

Incogni said data collection took place Jan. 5-7, 2026. Researchers searched the Chrome Web Store for extensions with "AI" in the name or description, then manually checked whether core functionality relied on techniques such as machine learning or large language models. Extensions with fewer than 1,000 users were excluded, the company said.

Incogni said 10 extensions had both high risk and high impact, including Nily AI Sidebar and EaseMate.

Among permissions, the firm highlighted "scripting," which can allow an extension to inject code into websites. Incogni said 42% of extensions requested scripting, potentially affecting as many as 92 million users based on download counts.

Incogni ranked "programming and mathematical aids" as the most privacy-compromising category on average, followed by meeting assistants and audio transcribers. Audiovisual generators and text and video summarizers were, on average, the least privacy-invasive categories, it said.

Incogni said the practical question for consumers is how much access an extension needs to do its job, and whether the data it collects appears related to its purpose.