Tens of millions of users who visit Google sites use a browser loaded with malicious add-ons, research suggests.
Most rogue extensions bombard people with ads, but the most malicious steal login names and other valuable data.
Carried out by security experts and Google, the project analysed more than 100 million visits to the search giant's sites.
It led to Google purging almost 200 bad extensions from its online catalogues of browser add-ons.
Bad behaviour?
Extensions and add-ons for web browsers add all kinds of functions and features to the software.
Many of these extensions have hidden extras that cause trouble for people who install them, said UC Santa Barbara computer scientist Alexandros Kapravelos, who worked with Google on the rogue extensions project.
The research found that malicious extensions were available for every major browser.
The findings are due to be published in full in May at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy.
Preliminary results revealed that 5% of people accessing Google every day have been caught out by at least one malicious extension.
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