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One of Ethereum’s browsers add-ons has come under fire for broadcasting users addresses to websites they visit.

The add-on, Metamask, reportedly keeps tabs on your online activity as part of the default settings it come installed with when you download it. As such, this means that any site you have accessed is tracked and remembered. The news came from a GitHub issue posted several days ago.

The issue states that the setting “sacrifices the privacy of everyone in the system”. As a result of the setting, Metamask will save preferences you may have made online and the sites you have visited and in a similar way to how cookies might. It can thus mean that prices on websites will increase the more you visit them, as well as keep track of other more personal information on websites that you may not want to be remembered. Even if you are browsing in private mode.

It is feared that due to this, your blockchain transactions can be linked to your credit card, which thus sacrifices your identity when you make online payments. This can then further leave you exposed to people monitoring your social circles. Other sides effects of Metamask is that it can slow down your conversions from ETH to Fiat, or even effect employment opportunities or health metrics.

The user who posted the issue has called for an end to this feature for the sake of the users who may suffer adverse effects from it. Something we can understand, seeing as privacy is one of the key elements of blockchain technology and this clearly voids that completely. If the reported issue is true, that is.

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