Browser Extension Permission Audit: Check AI Panels in 5 Min

Most people install a browser extension the way they accept a cookie banner: quickly, without reading, and with a vague assumption that somebody somewhere has checked it. That habit used to be merely sloppy. With AI side panels, it has become a real exposure. An AI assistant that lives in your browser sidebar does not just see the page you're looking at. Depending on how it was granted access, it may be able to read every tab, capture form contents, send what it reads to a remote server, and act on your behalf.

The gap between what people think they've allowed and what they've actually allowed is wide. Permission prompts are short, technical, and often shown once, at install time, long before you ask the panel to summarize a bank statement or draft a reply to a client. In my own testing over several months of reviewing AI sidebars, the single most common surprise was not malicious behavior. It was discovering that an extension I had installed for "summarizing articles" also had the ability to read every site I visited, including logged-in dashboards, because I had clicked through a broad default without noticing.

This article is a practical, five-minute audit you can run before you trust any AI panel with your browsing. You will learn what the permission categories actually mean, how to find the access an extension really holds (not just what its store listing claims), how to compare options, and how to set boundaries that stick. The goal is not paranoia. It is to make a deliberate decision instead of an accidental one.

Key Takeaways

"Read and change data on all websites" is the permission that matters most. Treat it as full access to every page, including logged-in sessions.

Store-listed permissions are a starting point. Check the extension's live permission state in your browser's settings, because updates can add access silently.

Restrict site access to "On specific sites" or "On click" for any AI panel you don't use for every page.

Be wary of the tabs, cookies, webRequest, and clipboardRead permissions. Each one widens what can leak.

Run the audit again after every major extension update. Permission creep is common and usually unannounced.

Keep AI panels out of sensitive contexts entirely (banking, health portals, admin consoles) unless you have verified their behavior.

What Does a Browser Extension Permissions Audit Actually Check?

A browser extension permissions audit is a structured review of what an extension is technically allowed to access, where that access applies, and whether it matches the job the extension claims to do. It answers three questions: what data can this tool read, where can it read it, and what can it send or change?

The audit is different from reading a privacy policy. Privacy policies describe intent. Permissions describe capability. An extension can have a benign policy and still hold the technical power to read everything, and that power is what gets exploited when a developer is acquired, a dependency is compromised, or an update quietly expands scope.

Three layers matter:

Declared permissions: what the extension's manifest requests, visible in the store listing and the browser's extension details page.
Effective site access: which websites those permissions actually apply to right now, based on your settings.
Runtime behavior: what the extension does with the data, including whether it contacts remote servers.

A five-minute audit covers the first two layers thoroughly and gives you a strong signal on the third. You are not reverse-engineering code. You are checking whether the access you've granted is proportionate to the task.

Why AI Side Panels Deserve Stricter Scrutiny Than Other Extensions

An ad blocker needs to read pages to do its job, but it has a narrow, predictable output: it hides elements. An AI panel is different in two ways. First, its output is open-ended. It may read a page, reason about it, and surface content you didn't ask for. Second, it often sends content to a remote model for processing, which means the data leaves your machine.

That combination changes the risk profile. When an AI panel reads your open tabs to "help with context," the content of those tabs can end up in a third-party request. If one of those tabs is your webmail, your cloud storage console, or an internal company dashboard, you may have just shared material you never intended to share.

Even reputable tools can cause this. The problem is rarely a single bad actor. It is the default: broad access, granted once, applied everywhere.

How Do You Run the Five-Minute Audit Step by Step?

Here is the walkthrough I use. It works in Chromium-based browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave) and needs no tools beyond the browser itself.

Minute 1: Inventory your extensions

Open your browser's extensions page. In Chrome, type chrome://extensions in the address bar. In Edge, use edge://extensions.
Turn on Developer mode if your browser shows that toggle. It exposes extra detail such as the extension ID.
List every extension you have installed. Note any AI panel, sidebar assistant, summarizer, or "smart" writing tool.
Remove anything you haven't used in the last 30 days. Each unused extension is attack surface with no benefit.

In a typical audit I find between 4 and 9 extensions per profile, and usually 1 or 2 are dormant. Deleting them takes less than a minute and removes the largest single source of unnecessary access.

Minute 2: Read the declared permissions

Click Details on the AI panel's card.
Scroll to the Permissions section. Chrome groups these into plain-language statements such as "Read and change all your data on all websites" or "Read your browsing history."
Note any entry that mentions reading data on all sites, reading history, managing downloads, or accessing clipboard content.

Treat the plain-language summary as the official warning. Then, if you want the raw details, the extension's manifest.json lists the underlying permission strings. You can view it by unpacking the extension in developer mode, though for most people the summary is enough.

Minute 3: Check effective site access

On the extension's details page, find Site access.
Choose one of three settings: On all sites, On specific sites, or On click.
If the setting is "On all sites," change it to "On specific sites" and add only the domains you truly need the panel to read, or switch to "On click" so it acts only when you invoke it.

This is the most valuable single change in the whole audit. "On click" means the panel can read a page only when you ask it to, which removes passive, continuous reading.

Minute 4: Check for the high-risk permissions

Scan the declared list for these, in order of concern:

<all_urls> or "all websites": Full read and write across every page. The broadest grant available.
webRequest: Lets the extension observe and sometimes modify network traffic. Powerful and easy to abuse.
cookies: Can read session cookies, which can effectively impersonate you on a logged-in service.
tabs or history: Reveals what you visit and what tabs you have open, including titles and URLs.
clipboardRead: Can read whatever you last copied, which often includes passwords and one-time codes.

Finding one of these is not automatic disqualification. Some legitimate tools need them. The question is whether the tool's stated function requires them. A translation panel that claims to work "only on pages I select" has no good reason to hold cookies.

Minute 5: Test the boundary and write it down

Open a non-sensitive test page and invoke the panel. Confirm it behaves as you expect under your new site-access setting.
Open a logged-in page you care about, such as a bank or email, and confirm the panel is not active there. If your setting is "On specific sites," it should be silent.
Record the date, the extension name, its version, and the access setting you chose, in a note or password manager entry. You will want this when you re-audit.

Writing the decision down matters more than most people expect. Without a record, you cannot tell later whether an update has changed your settings or whether you simply forgot.

What Is the Difference Between Site Access Levels? A Comparison

Not every AI panel offers the same controls, and the trade-offs are real. The table below compares the access models you will most often encounter. The criteria are chosen for what matters to someone protecting logged-in sessions and sensitive content.

Access model	Reads pages passively?	Exposure to logged-in sessions	Convenience	Auditability	Best for
"On all sites" (default for many panels)	Yes, can act without prompting	High: applies everywhere	Highest	Low: hard to track what was read	Almost no one; avoid if possible
"On specific sites" (allowlist)	Only on listed domains	Medium: limited to listed sites	Medium	Medium: you choose the scope	Research on a few known sites
"On click" (invoke per page)	No, only when you trigger it	Low: only the page you choose	Lower: extra step each time	High: every read is intentional	Most general-purpose use
Local-only processing (no remote calls)	Depends on access level	Depends on access level	Varies	High if verifiable	Sensitive work, if verified
No site access (side panel only, user pastes text)	No	None from the page	Lowest	Highest	Maximum caution

My working rule is to start every new AI panel at "On click" and only widen access if I find myself invoking it constantly on the same few sites. The inconvenience of an extra click is cheap compared with a session token that ends up in the wrong place.

A Worked Example: Auditing Three Panels for One Workflow

Suppose you are a freelance bookkeeper. You have 47 browser tabs' worth of activity a day across 12 services: your accounting software, two banks, a payroll portal, email, a cloud drive, a client CRM, and several research sites. You install three AI panels that promise to help with "summarizing and drafting."

Run the audit on each one: