Fwd: Monetization For Your Extension

[PhistucK]

I got the e-mail below. While it does not say it is from Google, it is fishy. Going to chrome-extensions.uk redirects to the web store.

For your information.

☆PhistucK

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Katie Overton <ka...@chrome-extensions.uk>
Date: Thu, Jun 16, 2022 at 3:23 PM
Subject: Monetization For Your Extension
To: phis...@gmail.com <phis...@gmail.com>

Hi

I am Katie Overton from Chrome Extensions UK store and wanted to reach out to you to offer a way to increase revenue earnings from your extension Penguins.

We are providing our partners with Bing feeds that pays well on extensions for search. It can earn up to $1000 a month per 5000 users, it is a premium product from Bing by invitation only.

If your extension does not have search this is not a problem with a simple update this can be added, furthermore it is completely acceptable by google chrome store.

Any questions please reply I am here ready to help you monetize your extension.

Kind Regards

Katie Overton

Head Of Business Relations

[hrg...@gmail.com]

I've got dozens of those emails over the years. They always offer either to buy your extension or to monetize it by adding a piece of Javascript to it.

I never delete their messages so I can observe the pattern in them and detect when new messages are from the same people. For example,  they've used different domain names over the years. Such as:

apps-extensions.com

chrome-extensions.uk
inv-extensions.com
invoke.business
invoke-extensions.com
invokes-extensions.com
invokevision.email
mg.mobile-monetizations.com
monetization-providers.com
monetize-extension.com
webuyanyextension.com

Also, their email addresses always use single names such as:

beth
diana
joshua
julia
katie
leo
leonard
maria
martin
peter
rebecca
vicky
viky
victoria

I once asked them what modifications do I have to make to my extension. And they replied with this:

 "chrome_settings_overrides": {
        "search_provider": {
            "name": "Extension Name",
            "keyword": "Extension Name",
            "search_url": "https://ntsmartfinder.com/?n=20&q={searchTerms}",
            "favicon_url": "https://ntsmartfinder.com/favicon.ico",
            "encoding": "UTF-8",
            "is_default": true
        }
    },  

So it's immediately obvious what they are doing; they use your extension to get every search text the user enters in the omnibox.