acquitelol
A Total Nightmare – Don’t Download It!
Alright, so I’m really angry right now, and I need to tell you about this Azalea extension for Sparx Maths. I thought it would help me with those annoying bookwork checks and make homework easier, but no, it turned into a big mess. If you thinking about downloading it, don’t do it. It’s bad, and I think it’s spying on everything I do on my laptop. Like, everything.
I found Azalea on GitHub because people on Reddit was saying it’s got nice themes and can skip the bookwork codes Sparx makes you do. I’m in Year 9, and Sparx Maths is awful—hours of fractions and algebra, and then it’s like “Write this code or do it again.” Azalea sounded good: it got pink and purple themes, which is nice, and it picks the answers so you don’t have to mess about. I installed it from the GitHub link, put it in Chrome like it said, and at first, I was happy. Bookwork checks was gone, and I could use a purple theme to make it less boring.
But then things got strange. After a couple days, my laptop started acting weird. Pages was loading slow, and I kept getting random pop-ups I never seen before. Then I notice my search history had stuff I didn’t look up—like, I not searching “best trainers under £50” or “how to fix a bike tyre” by myself. It’s like someone else was using my Chrome! I checked my downloads, and there was files I didn’t know—some strange .txt files and a weird .exe thing. I didn’t download them, so where they come from?
I got scared and looked into it. Azalea supposed to be “safe” cos the code’s on GitHub, but it’s all confusing, and I not a tech expert. I read that extensions can take your data if they not from the Chrome Store, and Azalea’s not there—it’s just some GitHub thing. I think it been spying on me. My search history got stuff from my WhatsApp chats, like it’s reading what I type to my friends. And my little brother said he saw a advert on my screen for a game I only talked about in real life, not searched. That’s creepy—how it know that?
The themes and bookwork skip was okay for a bit, but it’s not worth it. Azalea don’t got proper updates either—you have to download new versions yourself, and I don’t got time for that. I tried messaging the developer on GitHub, but they not reply. Total joke. Now I worried it’s still watching me even after I deleted it. I had to reset my whole laptop cos I didn’t trust it no more, and my dad was mad cos he had to help me fix it.
Honestly, Azalea’s a scam. It might look nice with its custom icons, but it’s a nightmare. It probably selling my data to someone or putting viruses in my downloads. I done with it—gonna try and find another Sparx Maths extension that don’t spy on my laptop. If you stuck with Sparx like me, just do the bookwork codes until you find something better. Azalea not worth the trouble—or the feeling that someone watching you all the time. Get rid of it. It’s rubbish.
I have not had any of these issues at all. I think that this is an entirely different problem. I have been using this for several months and has not had any negative affects. you have separate malware infecting your pc
The extention also physically can not operate and run any code on any site other than sparx maths website. It can only read the website contents and change the webpage to make it look pretty. Right click the extension, click manage extension, and under "site access" it says so. @Jamie-420
I'm sorry for your bad experience, but none of this has anything to do with Azalea. As I have mentioned in the README.md, Azalea's code is entirely open source. I even went as far as to build it on GitHub and not my local machine to prevent suspicions that I'm potentially adding anything into it before releasing it. The entire build process is transparent. Just because you are not personally a tech expert does not mean Azalea is a virus or spying on you.
To touch on your point that Chrome extensions not from the Web Store can spy on you, Chrome extensions, even local ones, have scoping rules which you define in manifest.json which specify the websites that the extension can access and what information they can access from those websites. Azalea can only access SparxMaths and that's it. Azalea isn't even running on webpages which aren't specifically sparxmaths.uk, so there is no way it can even be spying on you.
As for the lack of an updater, the reason it doesn't exist is because an updater implies I need to run code on your computer to update the extension or fetch code externally and run it. The way I did this before was very fragile and broke easily (such as a bad internet connection breaking it), as fetching code from external sources via Chrome extensions is really difficult, due to security restrictions. I got rid of it because Azalea doesn't need to be updated very often anyway. This is also outlined in the README.md.
Please investigate further, and you can read the Azalea source code or even inspect the bundle if you like (or get somebody else to do it if you feel that you aren't experienced enough to do so) but I assure you that Azalea is not the cause of those issues on your computer.
Note: I don't think you ever tried to message me on GitHub? You don't really "message" people on GitHub anyway you open issues on the respective repositories like you just did now. If you had raised an issue before I would have replied.
To further add on, you should try checking your laptop for potential malware, using MalwareBytes as soon as possible.
There is a likely reason its not from the chrome web store - you have to pay to put it on there - which may be why!
