Urban VPN Chrome extension harvested AI chatbot conversations
The Urban VPN Proxy Chrome extension with 6 million users intercepted and harvested conversations from ChatGPT, Gemini, and eight other AI platforms after a July 2025 update. Security researchers found the extension captured prompts, responses, timestamps and session metadata before sending them to Urban VPN's servers, with data shared to data broker BiScience. The malicious code was also found in seven related extensions by the same developer.
What happened
The Urban VPN Proxy Chrome extension, which had more than 6 million users and a 'Featured' badge, was found intercepting user conversations with ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Perplexity, DeepSeek, Grok and Meta AI.
Starting with version 5.5.0 released in July 2025, the extension used dedicated 'executor' scripts to inject code into chatbots, capture user messages and responses, and send prompts, responses, timestamps and session metadata to Urban VPN's servers.
Security researchers at Koi discovered the malicious code was also present in seven other extensions made by the same developer, including 1ClickVPNProxy, Urban Browser Guard and Urban Ad Blocker.
Reported impact
Conversations from millions of users with AI platforms were captured and exfiltrated without their knowledge, as the extension updated automatically by default.
Data collected by the extension was shared with data broker BiScience for ad analytics purposes.
Governance controls
The extension was advertised as a free-to-use privacy and security tool with a 4.7-star average rating on the Chrome Web Store, which granted it a 'Featured' badge despite hosting malicious code.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.