[the8472]

Either those are malicious, in which case you lost the game and cannot defend against that because they have the security high ground, or they legitimately act on the user's behalf.

The "quietly" adjective suggests they are malicious. Which means they should be reported to AV vendors (including microsoft) instead of being used as a boogeyman when arguing against user freedoms.

[SCHiM]

Yes, especially since true malware creators have been able to inject code into browsers and intercept and modify pages for ages. They don't need an add-on, they'll just inject a shared library or something similar.