I talked about this before on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47142325

Facts: - restarted archlinux yesterday after updates, so browser will start clean - did not open perplexity.com since that restart - on the morning chromium tried to open perplexity.com - again after more or less 8 hours, another call to that site - I don't have any extension other than ublock origin on Chromium: Version 147.0.7727.116 (Official Build, ungoogled-chromium) Arch Linux (64-bit)

So why is chromium trying to open perplexity.com?

I have opensnitch installed and every connection prompts to allow or deny, that is why I can find this requests. I did use perplexity a few days ago, but sure it was before update, so pc was restarted.

This was made from /usr/lib/chromium/chromium.

Even /usr/lib/firefox/browser/omni.ja is full of perplexity.ai crap, and some other sites, but that is shocking. I found perplexity mentions on Firefox, Librewolf and Thunderbird libs. But none for Chromium.

I know there is a aur/perplexity 1.5.1-2 client but I don't have it installed, as I don't have any account with them.

This is worst than a virus. I don't even know where to start to find evidence? Chromium code?