"Surely" (or at least hopefully) I'm not the first to wonder about this (but a search on "StackEye security" gets me nothing).

All I really want to do is follow users on StackExchange and so I followed my nose to a ~10 year old canonical answer for doing so. So far so good, let's install the StackEye extension in Chrome then.

But what I see there makes my blood run cold. Can it really, truly Read and change all your data on all websites? And which should worry me more? Read and Change or ALL?

So my question is what is the basic tenet of RSS security that applies here because I can't imagine that things are as bad as this makes it sound.

For example:

• Are there any permanent risks to my device or would the "worst that could happen" still be ephemeral, affecting only the current view of the page?
• Can the extension change modify unrelated cookies or install tracking?
• What am I really giving up (if anything) if I go ahead and click [Add Extension]?

Surely (or at least hopefully) I'm not the first to wonder about this (but a search on "StackEye security" gets me nothing).

All I really want to do is follow users on StackExchange and so I followed my nose to a ~10 year old canonical answer for doing so. So far so good, let's install the StackEye extension in Chrome then.

But what I see there makes my blood run cold. Can it really, truly Read and change all your data on all websites? And which should worry me more? Read and Change or ALL?

So my question is what is the basic tenet of RSS security that applies here because I can't imagine that things are as bad as this makes it sound.

For example:

• Are there any permanent risks to my device or would the "worst that could happen" still be ephemeral, affecting only the current view of the page?
• Can the extension change modify unrelated cookies or install tracking?
• What am I really giving up (if anything) if I go ahead and click [Add Extension]?