[ Before we start, I’m sorry for being too “editorial today. ]
Someone posted, and tagged it under XKit, that XKit caused their computer to destabilize, causing operating system errors and crashes.
After sending them an ask from my main blog, they assured me that it was caused by XKit according to their logs, and that "the guys behind [XKit] should look into that.” After telling them that I was the person behind XKit, and asked for the said error logs, they refused to show me them, and assured me that their computing skills are better than mine, and they are sure that XKit caused this.
Let me be blunt: this is idiocy. I should not even bother responding to this on this blog, but I’m doing this just to inform you:
- Chrome extensions (except NPAPI ones, but they are called “plugins”) are written in Javascript, and sandboxed so they can’t actually reach the operating system itself.
- Chrome extensions can only access Chrome APIs, which are really limiting.
- On top of that, modern operating systems have protective mechanisms on, that prevents you (or an app) from deleting operating system data.
No Chrome (or Safari, or Firefox) extension can “crash” your system. Evil ones can inject stuff that shows ads or steals data, or makes your browser slower or unresponsive, but to the point that your computer refuses to start up, is impossible. Also, if you are seeing ads on Tumblr, it’s a sign that you’ve accidentally installed one of those evil extensions.
I suggest going though your extensions list in your browser and delete ones with funny names like “1-2-3-4-GO” or just random numbers and letters.