Besides ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, the extensions harvest all conversations from Copilot, Perplexity, DeepSeek, Grok, and Meta AI. Koi said the full description of the data captured includes:<\/p>\n
Every prompt a user sends to the AI
\nEvery response received
\nConversation identifiers and timestamps
\nSession metadata
\nThe specific AI platform and model used<\/p>\n
The executor script runs independently from the VPN networking, ad blocking, or other core functionality. That means that even when a user toggles off VPN networking, AI protection, ad blocking, or other functions, the conversation collection continues. The only way to stop the harvesting is to disable the extension in the browser settings or to uninstall it.<\/p>\n
Koi said it first discovered the conversation harvesting in Urban VPN Proxy<\/a>, a VPN routing extension that lists \u201cAI protection\u201d as one of its benefits. The data collection began in early July with the release of version 5.5.0.<\/p>\n \u201cAnyone who used ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or the other targeted platforms while Urban VPN was installed after July 9, 2025 should assume those conversations are now on Urban VPN\u2019s servers and have been shared with third parties,\u201d the company said. \u201cMedical questions, financial details, proprietary code, personal dilemmas\u2014all of it, sold for \u2018marketing analytics purposes.’\u201d<\/p>\n Following that discovery, the security firm uncovered seven additional extensions with identical AI harvesting functionality. Four of the extensions are available in the Chrome Web Store. The other four are on the Edge add-ons page. Collectively, they have been installed more than 8 million times.<\/p>\n They are:<\/p>\n Chrome Store<\/p>\n Urban VPN Proxy: 6 million users Edge Add-ons:<\/p>\n Urban VPN Proxy: 1,32 million users Read the fine print<\/p>\n The extensions come with conflicting messages about how they handle bot conversations, which often contain deeply personal information about users\u2019 physical and mental health, finances, personal relationships, and other sensitive information that could be a gold mine for marketers and data brokers. The Urban VPN Proxy<\/a> in the Chrome Web Store, for instance, lists \u201cAI protection\u201d as a benefit. It goes on to say:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Besides ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, the extensions harvest all conversations from Copilot, Perplexity, DeepSeek, Grok, and Meta AI.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355206,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-355205","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n1ClickVPN Proxy: 600,000 users
\nUrban Browser Guard: 40,000 users
\nUrban Ad Blocker: 10,000 users<\/p>\n
\n1ClickVPN Proxy: 36,459 users
\nUrban Browser Guard \u2013 12,624 users
\nUrban Ad Blocker \u2013 6,476 users<\/p>\n