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Comment by westoque | Hacker News Reader

Good strategy! That's also what I did to get my side project (Cookie Inspector - Google Chrome Cookie Editor) project to having 80,000/daily users.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cookie-inspector/j...

I solely marketed it at Stack Overflow and was getting upvotes and that was all my marketing.

https://superuser.com/questions/244062/how-do-i-view-add-or-...

Also a big factor there are good reviews. When users like your project/product, they will market it for you.

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HN users clicking through: take a look at reviews before installing. Appears there may be an issue with adware.

westoque - might want to check your code base, if the adware is unintentional.

I'm on mobile currently and apparently cannot look at reviews for Chrome extensions. Cookie Inspector is open source[0] according to the extension page, so you could try finding any adware-related code yourself, couldn't you?

[0]: https://github.com/westoque/cookie_inspector

Chrome does nothing to guarantee that an extension is built from the source that it claims.

You can verify that source, enable external sources in Chrome, ('developer mode' or somthing) and then install it - but that says nothing about what's on the Chrome store.

Thankfully, all Chrome extensions can at least have the source viewed.

The .crz file type for Chrome extensions is actually a .zip file, so the code can be inspected. If it's obfuscated this doesn't mean much though.

I never trust Chrome extensions - too often the business model is to build up a user base and then sell the spot in the store.

The only way to safely install extensions is to pack them yourself from versions you trust, then drag + drop them into the extensions window.

Smart man.

Thanks. Yes, it has been an issue and the adware is definitely unintentional.

Will fix immediately :)

Adding to my answer above: users are more likely to install your product too if you provide good customer support.

Post-mortem would be appreciated. As someone who has Chrome extensions in the store, how did you get malware-infected?

How do you accidentally write code to make your extension adware?

If it's there, I can't find it. I highly recommend https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chrome-extension-s... to let you download and view the source of extensions.

But how do you know if that extension isn't compromised?

Install it in a VM, unpack it from the filesystem.

How do you make money?

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