is a firefox extension selling my tracking info, and that's why i'm getting so much extremely detailed and perfectly timed spam?

ok, so i know this is an incredibly specific problem i'm having.

the overwhelming amount of spam that one receives (in my mostly intentionally misspelled missdesigned missaddressed, missformatted, constant spam from throwaway addresses with titles from harbor freight, camp legune, just for men, costco, southwest, state farm, ace hardware, sams club, lol, i'm a middle aged american guy what can i tell you) that's happening all over the net, and has in ridiculously increasing quantity over the last 18 months. it's an all out war by spammers, and i'm sure there are major crime/hacking networks behind it, not only to raise funds from phishing, but to find ways to beat and exploit major email systems defenses to use in other areas like banks and defense networks.

i'm also convinced, after watching the timing and the way the spam is being sent/received to my free microsoft outlook.com account, these spam "attacks" are feeding off of my web browsers extension tracking.

for most web browser extensions, written by anyone, to do the thing they do, whether it's allow downloading of any specific web asset, changing a web page, ad blocking, script injecting, when installed one must first agree to let the extension "read all web data from websites"

this, or course opens the user up to allowing, by clicking the install button, the extension to read everything you're browsing, from everywhere, social media, porn, banking, taxes. now i don't know specifics regarding what extensions can and cannot read, whether they pick up typed in username and password info, whether banks have special security on their sites to prevent extensions from reading ALL the data displayed, but even having the names and addresses of the sites visited, can and i believe are informing the spam bots, and that's what I'd like to put an end to. (if these extensions are actually reading password/banking/tax info we're all pretty fucked)

i have a number of extensions, that i use with Firefox latest version, moved over from chrome about 6 months ago, and the same spam specificity/timing was happening there

i love tumblr, been a member of that site over a decade now, and just like posting and looking at other shit people post without having to interact with them, it's a vibe

tumblr doesn't allow simple blocking, so even though i follow others sometimes they post stuff like korean pop bands, and fill up my timeline, and i'd rather not have to scroll past it, and that's where Tumblr Savior comes into the picture. TS with the install, allows one to highlight text, right click, and add to it's Black list, and just like that, the easiest simplest most thoroughly painless way content i do not want to interact with simply ceases to exist

downside is i think this is the extension that's selling my tracking/browsing information. I have six extentions that are active in my Firefox installation, uBlock Origin, New Tab, Honey, Archive Page, Violentmonkey, Bitwarden, Consent O Matic and Tumblr Savior

I post this in hopes that others who might have had these same spam/specific timed spam issues, have identified where and how it's so dialed in, and whether others have identified Tumblr Savior as the culprit

cheers

T0RB1T,
@T0RB1T@sh.itjust.works avatar

Yes, extensions can do that, and some do.

Tumble Savior could be the culprit, but Honey 100% is a data harvesting extension.

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