VPN Betrayal: Popular “Free” Extensions Caught Siphoning 8 Million Users’ Private AI Chats

According to KOI, the Urban VPN Proxy browser extension—whose cumulative installations have reached 8 million—has been found exploiting script-based hijacking of browser APIs to siphon off users’ sensitive information, specifically targeting conversations with AI platforms. The primary focus of this data exfiltration is users’ chats with AI services, with the extension harvesting both user-submitted prompts and AI-generated responses in their entirety.

While Urban VPN claims to safeguard users by inspecting AI-generated content, the extension continues to collect complete chat transcripts and shares them with commercial data analytics and marketing firms, enabling targeted advertising. The data collection operates independently of the VPN tunnel, ad-blocking features, or other core functionalities, meaning that disabling the VPN or related protections does not stop surveillance and the only reliable remedy is to uninstall the extension.

Affected AI platforms include ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, DeepSeek, Grok, Copilot, Meta AI, and Perplexity. The implicated extensions are listed across Chrome Web Store and Edge Add-ons, with some already removed from Google’s store.