A report says that Google has been forced to shut down all paid extensions after experiencing an influx of fraudulent transactions on the office Chrome Web Store.
The company as temporary suspended publishing or updating of all commercial extensions as a precautionary measure against the fraudulent attack it is currently experiencing.
specifically, the suspension involves all extensions which need an upfront payment, monthly recurring payments, or that offer in-app purchases.
Google engineers notice that the surge of ill-transactions started earlier this month at a mass scale. The ban though temporary will allow Google to try to resolve the situation behind the scene. It impacts all app developers on Chrome Webstore including premium ones like Dashlane.
Simone Vincent a developer advocate for Google Chrome extensions at Google said this is a temporary measure meant to mitigate the influx while a long-term solution to address the broader pattern of abuse is considered.
There is currently no news about when the ban will be lifted.
Although Google announced the suspension last week developers said they already have been experiencing issues with updating apps or publishing new versions of their app onto the store long before last week. Specifically, they were being greeted by messages that said “sperm and placement in the store” every time they try to update an app or publish a new version.
Interestingly this news comes after Mozilla Firefox recently removed 200 Shady add-ons from its browser extensions. These add-ons were stealing users’ data in a similar way similar to clean up drives.