We have a new extension that we built for many months and is live on the webstore.
Our extension communicates with our API and we get many fake installs daily – installs that we see in our API and not in the web store.
After many sleepless nights – We suspect that a robot with chrome runs our extension and deletes the local storage every time – this is only our best guess, although we are not sure if it’s likely because the IP of each installation is different.
There are many more details – so If you would like to help and need further info let me know what and I can elaborate.
I’m not familiar with this Chrome extension API, BUT, if someone earns money by letting people install your extension then I’d check that lead.
Eventually, the clients (many IPs you say) that apparently “install” your extension report this event by making an HTTP request – again I only presume!
Saying that, it might be that someone controls many computers which simply initiate these HTTP requests to “report” a (fake) installation, thus making money.
If that is the case, and someone does make money out of your extension (could be also INDIRECTLY) then check the affiliate code or whatever, this is even an issue to report to Google itself, they can certainly investigate that.