Honey browser extension was a security risk during the holiday season, says Amazon

Millions of holiday deal hunters may have been hit with a strange warning from Amazon over the holidays.

The browser extension Honey, a popular shopping aid that enables price comparisons between marketplaces, searches for discount codes, and offers myriad other ways to save a buck or two while online shopping, was flagged as a security risk for users who had it enabled when they checked Amazon in late December, according to a report from Wired.

According to Amazon, users should "uninstall [Honey] immediately" because it harvests data from its users as they shop online. This is curious, because Honey, which has 17 million users, was acquired by PayPal for $4 billion just a month prior to these warnings showing up. It frequently shows up on Chrome extension recommendation lists, including our own, and had never been flagged by Amazon prior to December.

In fact, Honey's Chrome web store page openly advertises it as a tool to make shopping on Amazon easier.

Honey told Wired that it only uses data to assist online shoppers; Amazon said it aims to warn customers when something is collecting their data, without getting much more specific than that. The app's privacy policy features an assurance that your data isn't being used for nefarious means:

"Honey does not track your search engine history, emails, or your browsing on any site that is not a retail website (a site where you can shop and make a purchase). When you are on a pre-approved retail site, to help you save money, Honey will collect information about that site that lets us know which coupons and promos to find for you. We may also collect information about pricing and availability of items, which we can share with the rest of the Honey community."

If you're feeling conspiratorial, you might start connecting dots here. Amazon and PayPal don't play nice with each other, as Amazon is a rare e-commerce platform that doesn't allow PayPal payments at all. Beyond that, Amazon has its own Honey alternative called Amazon Assistant, with similar features such as price tracking and product comparisons across different websites.

The circumstances are odd, to say the least, but it's also possible that Honey does scrape more data than its users realize. Even if you choose to believe Amazon is just sticking it to an old rival, it's probably worth your time to check out Honey's privacy policy in detail before using it anyway. It can't hurt.