Google has removed a Chrome extension from its store that was designed to track Jewish people, after it was found to be perpetrating and facilitating racist hate online.

Chrome extensions are free add-ons that are normally created to help make browsing experience more efficient. The pulled plug-in, removed for violating Google's hate speech and violence rules, added three brackets to either side of names within a web page that it identified as Jewish.

As well as flagging the names, the extension, called Coincidence Detector, collected them in a list that identified nearly 8,786 Jewish people, including celebrities such as Sacha Baron Cohen.

The list was used by the extension's 2,500 users to coordinate online attacks, according to Mic. It appears to have now been removed from the text sharing website where it was stored.

In response to the revelations, users on social media have put triple brackets around their usernames, defying the users of Coincidence Detector.