In reply to Ross Wintle.

That was my first thought too. Other plugins have been acquired over the years and turned into spyware/malware or used to create backdoors into wordpress installs. I believe some of the security vendors have some articles on this.

I can see some of the larger plugin companies purchasing this to use it to cross market their other plugins to the install base. At least one of the plugins I use has been acquired for this purpose.

Either way, it's time to start looking for an alternate solution as a worst-case scenario.