Amazon Alerts about the risks of using the browser extension ‘ Honey ‘Amazon alerts its customers of the risks of using the Chrome extension ‘ Honey ‘ The organization is recommending that the extension be withdrawn because they say it gathers personal data. PayPal who is an Amazon rival in the world of e-commerce recently acquired Honey. Amazon is openly calling the browser extension “Honey,” where a security risk collects data such as order history and saved items and reads content from the websites visited. Amazon concludes the message by suggesting that this extension be removed stating that offers deals and coupons are available to shoppers whether or not they use Honey. Amazon tells shoppers that Honey’s browser extension it’s giving you coupon codes and other ways to save is malware. Ryan Hutchins (@ryanhutchins) December 20, 2019 Honey is a browser extension that automatically finds offers in over 40000 online shops (including Amazon) and applies coupon codes automatically at checkout. In addition, the extension can track an item’s price and send a notification to the user when it drops below a defined threshold while a reward program (Honey Gold) is also available. All that said Honey saves time and money and that’s why millions of people have it installed on their computer and are involved. PayPal paid $4 billion in November to acquire the company behind Honey which was a move confirming the service’s value. PayPal hasn’t clarified what their integration plan would be if there was one, but they still felt they had to rush and buy the firm. Many claim that Amazon’s move isn’t a sudden realization of the security risks that generally underpin browser extensions and Honey has been compatible with it for years anyway. The problem here is that Amazon refuses Honey simply because it’s now part of its competitor PayPal, according to industry experts. The timing of this alert is definitely suspicious but Amazon says that they are actually trying to raise awareness about extensions that gather personal shopping data without their permission from their customers. This last section is where Honey puts its principal point of a dispute over the arguments of Amazon. Honey says they are doing nothing outside of what is defined by the security and privacy policy that users agree to prior to activating the extension. In fact, Honey has told everyone that they work regularly with security firms reviewing the service, and last summer they patched a serious data privacy vulnerability found thanks to these programs. So Amazon seems to have responded to the new acquisition by PayPal in an oversensitive manner and it really seems like this is a question of business competition that has nothing to do with helping its customers remain safe and protected. When Amazon provides an option for Honey soon this scenario will have been proven without doubt.