Topic: Blockchair explorer extension for tracking of Wallet addresses on any Website (Read 134 times)

You don't have anonymous tracking of your portfolio using this extension. This is quite de opposite.

You are sending requests for those addresses to  blockchair.com server, and they linking those addresses to your IP in their database.

You 100% identified and linking different addresses together.

Just to illustrate, you are basically visiting a URL with an address to get its balance:
Request URL: https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/address/tx-data?privacy-o-meter=true&address=1CHAriTyyuCzLdXshSDVohyjgxTxW9Bhx&hashes=&advanced=0&offset=0

Then they have a data with the list of URL you visited, and the IP from which you visited.

The only way to have anonymity while tracking your portfolio is by running your own full node (where you don't send requests to anyone requests your addresses balance) or using a tool such as loycev's all addresses with balance: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/list-of-all-bitcoin-addresses-with-a-balance-5254914 (as you get all addresses, he doesn't know which one is yours).

Be aware that every browser extension you install poses a risk to both your privacy and your security. I recommend only ever installing the bare minimum number of extensions, and only for things you cannot easily do without them. Copy and pasting an address in to a new blockchair window is something I would consider something I can very easily do without the need for a browser extension.

There is the privacy risk that tranthidung has outlined above, which is the general privacy risk which comes with looking up your addresses on a block explorer. Additionally, if they are providing a link next to every single address you see, then chances are they are pre-fetching these pages even if you don't click on them, which compromises your privacy even further. Combine that with the extension also keeping a portfolio of all your coins, and they now potentially know every address you own. Sure, they say they don't track that information, but given the extension is closed source as far as I can tell, then there is no way to verify that.

Every extension also makes your browser more unique and easier to track, and websites may very well be able to tell that you have such an extension installed. Perhaps I don't want Google or Facebook knowing that I have crypto extensions in my browser.

And then there are the security considerations. There have been plenty of extensions with critical bugs or vulnerabilities which have allowed attackers to exploit them for various purposes, including to inject arbitrary code in to your browser. Perhaps an attacker would be able to access the data regarding your portfolio. Perhaps even an attacker could hijack the links, directing you to different addresses and making you send coins to the wrong address. And again, since this extension is closed source, we have no way of examining what it is actually doing or what vulnerabilities might exist.

You don't get my point.

In the end, you are suffered with your privacy, not block explorers, nothing else. In addition, you can not trust them, rely on their statement that they completely secure your privacy, don't collect your data on their websites. I said it here as a normal user, not as an security or privacy expert so obviously I can not check their websites, codes, etc.

Furthermore, they are free to change their ToS, features, policies because of they want it or because government want it. Your privacy will lose forever when you leak it and you can not erase it on the Internet.

I found this in their privacy policies.

Source: https://blockchair.com/privacy

It's a TL;DR description, you can check https://blockchair.com/privacy for the rest of the information.

It is example on the risk of using block explorers without Tor. They collect data and you will know what will happen with the block explorer company/ owner and what is sort of new feature they might integrate in the future.

They might do something which breaks your privacy

• Selling your data
• Leaking your data unintentionally because of their bad security
• Officially provides new features which allow others to use their public database which probably contains yours

While I was surfing through [Guide] Using Blockchain Explorers I decided to explore some of the services of Blochair explorer. I installed their extension since it supports an anonymous tracking portfolio, and I must say that the explorer is very cool in the sense that it can easily detect 19 addresses of different blockchains on every web you are on, it can easily pop the blockchair Icon on every address, and a single click on any address opens a tab and searches for the content in that address.
It supports up to 19 different blockchains of major coins such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, BSC, Polkadot, Solana, and other popular blockchains.



You can manage the extension by enabling/disabling the change of all your data on websites. Depending on when you want it to detect addresses on the website and you could also enable just for bitcointalk website or enable the extension to work on all websites.



The view of every addresses that you see on bitcointalk after installing blockchair explorer extension.



website: https://blockchair.com/
Link to Blockchair chrome extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/blockchair/fhhkkooikehnkaodebbfnkinedlllcfk

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Disclaimer: I don't know how safe the extension is since I couldn't verify whether it's open/closed source, use it at your own risk.