Jul 9, 2025Confirmed
Urban VPN Proxy Browser Extension Reportedly Harvested and Sold Private AI Chatbot Conversations via Silent Update
Rogue: Caused harmAI loose in the worldData exfiltrationDERIVED
Approved by person, Oct 11, 2026. How entries are approved
Security researchers reported that the Urban VPN Proxy browser extension introduced AI conversation–harvesting functionality in version 5.5.0, released July 9, 2025. The extension allegedly intercepted and exfiltrated private conversations from AI platforms including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and others without a user-facing opt-out. The data, including sensitive personal and financial information, was reportedly shared with affiliated data brokers for commercial analytics.
What this means for youIf you use AI chatbots in a browser, a VPN or proxy extension can read those chats and pass them on. At home and at work, check your installed extensions and remove any you do not need, especially VPN or proxy tools. Government and IT teams should block unapproved browser extensions on work devices.
Sources
- AI Incident Databasehttps://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/1356
Data from the AI Incident Database (incidentdatabase.ai), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. IAAI-21.
Source data license: CC BY-SA 4.0 (database). Report contents keep their own rights; reports.text, submissions, images and videos are excluded from the data license.
rogue:R4
Covered by snapshot 45
da93f03b406f409940d0a6ef47b526607f82ebf457d98f69299b88aceede576a
This entry is record number 2048. It has not been edited since it was approved; the hash above would not match if it had. How to verify