2 out of the 3 examples do not have more than 45k installs. The one example that did "had a simple PII stealer code" but was actually just sending telemetry.
The point of the article is probably valid, but the article itself seems to be dishonest.
One of the extensions had 45213 installs, which is what the headline stated. But no matter how you count it, the rest of the extensions was far off 45k.
The point of the article is probably valid, but the article itself seems to be dishonest.