Important: Updates on Chrome Extensions
21 expert repliesExtensions are a great way to enhance the browsing experience; whether you want to quickly post to social networks or to stay up to date with your favorite sports teams. Some extensions come bundled with others, which causes Chrome to ask whether you want to install them (or not). However, bad actors have abused this mechanism, bypassing the prompt to silently install malicious extensions that can override browser settings and alter the user experience in undesired ways. In fact, this is a leading cause of complaints from our users and a common topic here in the forum.
Since these malicious extensions are not hosted on the Chrome Web Store, it’s difficult to limit the damage they can cause. This is why we announced in November that as part of our continuing security efforts,, all extensions for Windows users must be hosted in the Chrome Web Store. A couple of FAQs:
What will happen to my non-web store extensions?
With this change, these extensions will be automatically disabled in your extension list, and can be completely removed by visiting your extensions list (you can access this by typing chrome://extensions in your omnibox).
What if I think an extension was disabled incorrectly?
If you feel an extension was incorrectly disabled, start first by checking if it can be enabled in your extension list and the Chrome Store. If not, please let us know below. You should also contact the extension manager so they are aware.
I’m an extension developer, what do I do?
If your extensions are currently hosted outside the Chrome Web Store you should migrate them as soon as possible. You can learn more from our Developers FAQ.
Why isn't this change optional?
What if I want to run non-web store extensions?
Advanced users can continue to use our Dev & Canary channels to run any extension. Please note that these channels are updated very regularly, and may contain features and bug fixes that are actively being developed.
Got questions? Please let us know them below. To keep up with the technical updates to Chrome, please read the Chromium Blog.
UPDATE June 12:
Hello, We’d like to provide update and address some of your questions:
Kaspersky plugin: Kaspersky plugins that existed outside of the Chrome web store have been disabled because they have developed a web store version of their extension, called Kaspersky Protection. You can learn more on their blog post and support page. All of the old Kaspersky extensions have been rolled into one package since the last update and you can access it via the web store.
Disabled extensions: If you have an extension that was disabled and would like to request it be added to the web store, please contact the extension developer directly (or see alternatives listed above). Extension developers were informed in November 2013 of this policy change, and are in control of the location of their extension.
Chrome web store fee: There is a one time $5 fee for developers to make their extension available in the web store. This is to prevent spam and fraudulent extensions from being made available in the web store.
If you have a question about extensions please search our forums for a more relevant post or start a new thread so someone from the Chrome team can help you!!
Why isn't this change optional?
Hello, We’d like to provide update and address some of your questions:
Kaspersky plugin: Kaspersky plugins that existed outside of the Chrome web store have been disabled because they have developed a web store version of their extension, called Kaspersky Protection. You can learn more on their blog post and support page. All of the old Kaspersky extensions have been rolled into one package since the last update and you can access it via the web store.
Disabled extensions: If you have an extension that was disabled and would like to request it be added to the web store, please contact the extension developer directly (or see alternatives listed above). Extension developers were informed in November 2013 of this policy change, and are in control of the location of their extension.
Chrome web store fee: There is a one time $5 fee for developers to make their extension available in the web store. This is to prevent spam and fraudulent extensions from being made available in the web store.
It's not simply because malicious developers exist. It's that we've collected data showing a large and quickly growing percentage of our users have been hit with forced installed extensions that invade privacy and worsen the browsing experience, often along with native "protector" software that attempts to keep those extensions installed even if users try to uninstall or disable them. While we can't share exact numbers, we have stated publicly that this has become our #1 customer complaint; if you spend a little time browsing this forum you'll see plenty of evidence of this.So we felt we were caught between 2 terrible choices:1) Implement this more restrictive policy that we hope will help a large percentage of our user base remain free of invasive extensions, but be an inconvenience to a smaller but definitely non-trivial number of more sophisticated/technical users who want to run extensions not installed from the webstore.2) Keep the current behavior, avoiding causing problems for more advanced users, but leaving a large portion of the user base afflicted with invasive extensions.In either case, plenty of people were going to be upset and unsatisfied, but at the end of the day we decided to try and do what we thought was right for the largest number of users. I understand that as an individual it may be hard to see things from this perspective, but I wanted to at least share how we're thinking about it even if that doesn't reduce your frustration about it.While we don't always get things perfect, we do have some processes in place in the webstore to prevent or take down extensions with abusive practices, but our ability to detect and prevent this for items outside the webstore is much more limited. Again, I'm really sorry this is frustrating for you folks who've posted as such so far. Here are a few options for you:-If it is an extension you wrote yourself, you can upload it to the webstore and publish it in a "hidden" state so that only people with the link, or people in a set of trusted tester users, can install it.-If it is an extension from a 3rd party software company, contact their support to point them at our blog post and ask them if they can migrate their extension to the webstore.-We are only enforcing this policy on Windows beta/stable channels, since that is where the problems are. More advanced users may wish to try out the chrome developer or canary channels (the canary can be installed side-by-side with other channels of chrome). Also I should note that we aren't enforcing this policy for chrome apps or themes, nor are we enforcing it for extensions on MacOS, Linux, or ChromeOS because we don't see anywhere near the same level of problems on those OSes (obviously switching OSes is a big deal and I don't mean to suggest that you should consider this, but I just wanted to make sure folks already running those OSes know that the policy doesn't affect them).
Hi All,
It appears Kaspersky has left their extension as unpublished, which is why it was disabled and is not searchable. People here have shared links that allow you to access it via their support page. I encourage you to contact Kaspersky and ask them to publish their extension.
If you have another extension that was disabled, you can usually contact the developer via the extension page. Unfortunately the decision to list and update to match policies is the decision of the developers. This policy change was announced in November 2013, and is a measure to protect against unwanted extensions being enabled on your browser, which is a common way that malware and unwanted 3rd parties get into your computer. If you are comfortable with our Developer version, you can use that with all extensions.
Thanks, Sarah
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- Extensions not in the web store: We recommend you reach out to the companies or developers and request that they submit their extension to the store.
- Stored data: Your are correct that once this is released you can not access your data from the stable channel. You can access it from the dev/canary version, so you can use that version to continue to use the extension or export your data from there.
- For help in Japanese, please check out our Japanese Language Chrome Forum.
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