Wish it was not needed, but Compete.com requires it from developers to prevent fraud usage of their API. fwiw, the Compete Stats API is usually a premium/paid service from Compete.com and the stats are generally not made available for free at scale.

Anyways, that is why it was made easy to shut off completely in case people didn't want to deal with it. Also making this behavior very clear in the next update within the extension itself (not just the welcome/upgrade pages). Privacy is critical.

As far as I can tell, the "stats monitor" feature is not advertised on the front page. In fact, I tried navigating the site for a while but couldn't hit the Firefox welcome/upgrade pages that contain the disclaimer.

Most people upgrade their plugin via Firefox's addon manager, and skip the "what's new" page that opens up. This is because we trust whoever made the plugin to not introduce any malicious behavior in future updates.

Judging by the intrusive nature of this feature, I believe it should be opt-in rather than opt-out.