CRX aminer
Extension icon

PayPal Honey: Automated Coupons & Cash Back

Version 19.0.3 View in Chrome Web Store

Last scanned: 3 days ago | force re-scan

Extension Details

Developer: https://www.joinhoney.com/
Rating: 4.6 ★ (179.8K ratings)
Users: 13,000,000

Context-Aware Verdict

MEDIUM
Overall Risk
Trust Factors: PayPal Honey is a legitimate extension owned by PayPal, a well-established financial services company. With 13 million users and a 4.6-star rating from nearly 180,000 reviews, it has strong user adoption and satisfaction. The extension's core functionality of finding coupons and providing cash back rewards is transparent and well-documented.
Concerns: While the extension is legitimate, its permissions are extensive for its stated purpose. The cookies permission allows access to sensitive authentication data across all websites. The webRequest permission enables interception of all web traffic, which could expose personal information, payment details, and browsing patterns. Broad host permissions mean the extension can access every website you visit. The combination of these permissions creates a powerful surveillance capability that extends beyond coupon finding.

The extension necessarily requires these permissions to function - it needs to monitor shopping sites, access pricing information, and inject coupon codes. However, this creates inherent privacy trade-offs as PayPal can potentially track your entire browsing behavior and shopping habits.

Recommendations: This extension is generally safe due to PayPal's reputation, but privacy-conscious users should be aware of the extensive data collection capabilities. Consider using it only when actively shopping rather than leaving it enabled constantly. Review PayPal's privacy policy to understand data usage. Users with high privacy requirements might prefer manual coupon searching over automated tools.

Findings

HIGH
Broad Host Permissions
This extension has broad host permissions allowing it to access many or all websites. This could potentially be used to steal sensitive data or track browsing activity.
HIGH
High-Risk Permission: cookies
This extension has the cookies permission. Can access and modify browser cookies. This could potentially be used maliciously to compromise security or privacy.
HIGH
High-Risk Permission: webRequest
This extension has the webRequest permission. Can intercept and modify web requests. This could potentially be used maliciously to compromise security or privacy.
MEDIUM
Medium-Risk Permission: storage
This extension has the storage permission. Can store data locally.
MEDIUM
Medium-Risk Permission: unlimitedStorage
This extension has the unlimitedStorage permission. Can store unlimited data locally.