When visiting a url in Chrome, I saw in Fiddler, after the responses, calls to:
http://api29.datarating.com/related
http://api29.datarating.com/service2
For example after going to http://www.google.com
I have this in Fiddler: http://api29.datarating.com/service2
with body:
e=Y3oweE56azNKbTFrUFRJeEpuQnBaRDF5VlRselNXeHhVRXBWZEU1bGNWa21jMlZ6Y3oweE9ESTJOakEwT1RNMU16UXdOVGd6TkRBbWMzVmlQV05vY205dFpTWnhQV2gwZEhCekpUTkJMeTkzZDNjdVoyOXZaMnhsTG1SbEx5VXpSbWRtWlY5eVpDVXpSR04wY213bE1qWmxhU1V6UkRZNFNWcFZOV1kwU25OVFdDMUJZbEZ6TkVkUlEwRWxNalpuZDNOZmNtUWxNMFJqY2lad2NtVjJQV2gwZEhCekpUTkJMeTkzZDNjdVoyOXZaMnhsTG1SbEx5WjBiWFk5TkRBd01pNHhKblJ0WmoweEpuTnlQV2gwZEhCekpUTkJMeTkzZDNjdVoyOXZaMnhsTG1OdmJTOD0%3D
which is Base64, decoded to another Base64 string:
cz0xNzk3Jm1kPTIxJnBpZD1yVTlzSWxxUEpVdE5lcVkmc2Vzcz0xODI2NjA0OTM1MzQwNTgzNDAmc3ViPWNocm9tZSZxPWh0dHBzJTNBLy93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmRlLyUzRmdmZV9yZCUzRGN0cmwlMjZlaSUzRDY4SVpVNWY0SnNTWC1BYlFzNEdRQ0ElMjZnd3NfcmQlM0RjciZwcmV2PWh0dHBzJTNBLy93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmRlLyZ0bXY9NDAwMi4xJnRtZj0xJnNyPWh0dHBzJTNBLy93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8=7
which decodes to:
s=1797&md=21&pid=rU9sIlqPJUtNeqY&sess=182660493534058340&sub=chrome&q=https%3A//www.google.de/%3Fgfe_rd%3Dctrl%26ei%3D68IZU5f4JsSX-AbQs4GQCA%26gws_rd%3Dcr&prev=https%3A//www.google.de/&tmv=4002.1&tmf=1&sr=https%3A//www.google.com/;
that obviously contains the URL I just visited.
By enabling and disabling the extensions in Chrome, I found that it was the extension:
SpeakIt! 0.2.91
**Is this allowed / legal?**
The question should have been Can we block this or are their extensions to check other extensions ? as pointed out.
I see some solutions :
Analyze the code of the extension with https://github.com/Rob--W/crxviewer/
Use an 'Adblock' kind of strategy with disconnect me https://disconnect.me/
Browser privacy modes. etc