Chrome extension slurps up AI chats after users installed it for privacy

More than seven million users of a VPN extension for Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge found out this week that their data could be harvested after researchers at Koi Security revealed the browser extension had been logging users’ AI chats and sending them to a data broker. Urban VPN Proxy looked legitimate, and more than six million people downloaded the Chrome version, with another 1.3 million installed on Microsoft Edge.

The extension was updated to version 5.5.0 on 9 July 2025, and according to Koi Security that update introduced code that intercepted conversations across eight AI assistant platforms, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, DeepSeek, Grok (xAI), and Meta AI. It then purportedly packaged the data and sent it to Urban Cybersecurity’s parent company, BiScience (B.I Science (2009) Ltd), a data broker.

Koi Security notes that the extension’s consent screen mentions AI data collection, but the Chrome Web Store listing reportedly described the product as protecting people from entering personal information into AI chatbots, a claim that clashes with harvesting behavior. If users had installed an earlier version, the extension reportedly auto-updated to the harvesting version in July, unbeknownst to many.