Extension removal query

[WPC vd Sanden]

Hi all,

Our extension ( ppdakpfeaodfophjplfdedpcodkdkbal ) was pulled from the CWS last week, with this detail:

==

Violation reference ID: Blue Lithium
Violation:
Providing unauthorised access to content behind login restrictions in the following site(s):
"linkedin.com"
Relevant section of the programme policy:
Do not facilitate unauthorised access to content on websites, such as circumventing paywalls or login restrictions. (learn more)

==

Now our extension doesn't facilitate anything of the sort, what it does is automating LinkedIn activity on behalf and under instruction from the end user. And has been doing this for over 10 years. 

We have since raised an appeal ( 0-9432000041309 ) but the responses we are getting from that are just reiteration of the original policy violation email.

I'd appreciate it if someone closer to the source could shed some light on the situation and help us get back in the CWS.

Thanks

Edwin

[Mike-O]

I believe AI is aggressive and faulty and at play here. We had some similar oddness. I received a notice that my developer account was considered a bot, when it was not. It was activated from Linux because I prefer to code from there, and I work with multiple companies, and so my browser comes up and asks which account I want to use. I think that mistakingly triggered the AI to think I was a bot, which is bizarre because they made me put in my phone number and I typed in the code from that. I'd pick up the call from google if they called me but I block most calls I don't know, and I've had fake google scammers who try to reset my gmail password to get into my account (and I catch them and expose them on the web, such as whoever owned google-accounts.com). So, I appealed and they agreed with me and reinstated my developer account, but then they still kept my chrome extension in a taken down state. I appealed that and all I got was a ticket case number and a "we're looking into it" auto response. Meanwhile, our business sits in a standstill while we wait on this, and it costs us hundreds of dollars a day with the downturn in our business while they take their sweet time to respond to us. As well, our Google Ads campaign got a "circumventing systems" BS and we're now in our second appeal on that too. We still don't know what we did that tripped the AI on this.

Google too heavily relies on AI now and they are hurting our business when we're suspended for no legitimate reason by false positive AI triggers. It makes me want to call my Senator to give Google an antitrust senate hearing because this is the sort of thing that triggers antitrust discussion. Google can claim, "well, there's Bing, and so you can't slap us with antitrust" -- but oh yes we can... I mean, AT&T had GTE out there, and they still broke up AT&T.

When you get a suspension notice from Google... often it's like the kid who gets expelled from school. When the parents show up at the school to ask why, they get handed a brochure of 20 items and told, "It's one of those infractions." When the parents ask, "Where's the evidence?" the staff says, "I don't know."  Like how is this not fraud? So, yeah, it's time to call our senators.

[Patrick Kettner]

Hey Mike!

I'm really sorry that you hit all that - would you be able to share your developer email or extension IDs so I can get to the bottom of whats going on?

Patrick Kettner

Chrome Extension Developer Relations

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[Mike-O]

It got resolved somehow on its own without sending me an email about it. I mean, I filed an appeal on my developer account lockout, and within a day that was replied with the approval and I re-engaged the account. But then, when I went to my chrome extension dashboard, it said "Taken Down". I looked at the footer and saw the Contact Us so that I could appeal. I went to appeal but then there wasn't a path on the bullet options that worked with this dashboard and this particular use case. So, I had to go back and choose Other. I filled out the form and explained the false positive (likely AI trigger) on my developer account and how it was re-instated. But then, we had to wait 3 days. We would have waited longer had not the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) asked me to check again. I didn't get an email response (well, I got the ticket number and the kind of "we'll get back to you soon" email), but didn't get the final response. I just checked on the dashboard and by the end of the third day, to our wild surprise, it was re-enabled.

Meanwhile, we got another bogus suspension on our Google Ads account about a month ago and I read in the forums that many other people are getting hit with this too -- something about "subverting systems" and it had us baffled and no evidence was given to us. So, we did an overhaul of our entire website and marketing, privacy policy, refund policy, the products -- no stone left unturned -- and are about to send in our second appeal to get our Google Ads account reinstated. Note this new chrome extension was not part of that account when it was suspended. It's a brand new extension with all new source code, branding, name, etc. Also, it's a brand new developer account too. See, we're rebranding our products and our company. So, since we're not the only one being vocal about this -- it seems to me that some AI process was engaged at Google that went amok and was doing false positives on Google Ads accounts, Developer accounts, and chrome extension accounts. But that's just a theory.

[WPC vd Sanden]

Hi,

I'm not getting any info out of Google regarding this case. If anyone from developer relations is reading this I would really appreciate some details on the reason for removing our extension, which as i mentioned has been in the CWS for over 10 years.. 

Thanks

Edwin

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[Patrick Kettner]

Hi Samuel,

replied on the other thread, but I am not showing your account as suspended? Where are you seeing that you are? Feel free to reply directly to me.

On Fri, Jul 10, 2026 at 2:12 AM Samuel Romano <pickg...@gmail.com> wrote:

Same issue here, @Patrick — would appreciate a look too.

My Google account was locked and my extension taken down at the same time. I appealed and the account was reinstated within a couple of days, but publishing is still blocked — the Web Store says my developer account is suspended, even though there are no violations anywhere: nothing in the dashboard, nothing in my email. The Profile page is clean and there's no appeal button, so every support form just loops me back to the dashboard. Looks like a stuck false-positive flag after reinstatement.

Details:
Publisher: PickGrab
Developer email: pickg...@gmail.com

Thanks!

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/chromium-extensions/c68c60e8-2b00-444e-84d1-d8eb7338459an%40chromium.org.

[WPC vd Sanden]

Hi Patrick,

I've been trying to get info from Google regarding the removal of our extension, but beyond a generic 'policy violation' I'm not getting any info. Can you provide some additional insight into our case. It concerns extension id ppdakpfeaodfophjplfdedpcodkdkbal  ( Dux-Soup ). As I mentioned before , we have been in the CWS for over 10 years and this removal has come completely out of the blue. 

Thanks

Edwin van der Sanden

[Patrick Kettner]

Hi Edwin

I looked into it, and it appears that extension was exfiltrating cookies from LinkedIn, which is against policy.

[WPC vd Sanden]

Hi Patrick,

Thanks for looking into this, that is very helpful. The cookie extraction is not a key requirement for most of our users. If we remove this from the extension and resubmit can we expect the listing to be restored?

Thanks

Edwin

[Patrick Kettner]

While I can't preapprove anything in a meaningful way (we only approve the actual submission), if you were to remove that behavior from the extension, I believe it would be restored.