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Privacy Badger is a browser extension that learns to block invisible trackers
- danuker 4y ago> If as you browse the web, the same source seems to be tracking your browser across different websites, then Privacy Badger springs into action, telling your browser not to load any more content from that source. And when your browser stops loading content from a source, that source can no longer track you. Voila! So, for example, does it stop loading fonts? Or CDN-hosted assets?
- c0balt 4y agoLast I checked they relied on DNS-level blocking , like ublock origin, in addition to some fancy replacements for widgets like disqus. I don't think privacy badger blocks loading content from most CDNs but it may block cookies from them.
- Hitton 4y agoI used it for short time few years ago, but stopped after it was breaking sites by blocking regular images from CDN. I guess I could have made a whitelist or otherwise tweak its behaviour, but I don't have time to babysit software which probably brought only marginal benefits over uO filters anyway.
- ghostwords 4y agoHi, Privacy Badger dev here. The short answer is, it *shouldn't*. Longer answer here: https://privacybadger.org/#Does-Privacy-Badger-contain-a-list-of-blocked-sites https://privacybadger.org/#Does-Privacy-Badger-contain-a-lis...
- gnuj3 4y agoAt this stage of uBlock Origin, is there actually any point of using other extensions of you’re just a regular Joe “browsing the web”?
- Grimburger 4y agoI like decentraleyes > Protects you against tracking through "free", centralized, content delivery. https://decentraleyes.org/ https://decentraleyes.org/
- toastal 4y agoIt's basically unmaintained and CDNs for this style of are not useful anymore... https://httptoolkit.tech/blog/public-cdn-risks/ https://httptoolkit.tech/blog/public-cdn-risks/
- divarre 4y agoGenuine question, how is it unmaintained? It was last updated 4 months ago: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes... https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes Is it not still relevant as long as all sites don't choose to host their own dependencies, as recommended in the article you linked?
- toastal 4y agoThe libs need to be manually maintained. Literally the first one I looked at, jQuery (https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes/-/tree/master/resources/jquery https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes/-/tree/master/res...), and we can take a look over at NPM (https://www.npmjs.com/package/jquery https://www.npmjs.com/package/jquery) and see the latest version, 3.6.0, was released on 2021-03-02 and is still not shipped with Decentraleyes. This add-on shaped the privacy-positive landscape for browsers upon it's release, but the features have be made obsolete with the latest browser isolation and that most entities have migrated to bundled JavaScript and off of CDNs.
- divarre 4y agoThanks for the clarification!
- eps 4y agoAs per Wikipedia - In October 2020, following security disclosures by the Google Security Team, Privacy Badger changed its default behavior. While it would previously learn to block new trackers heuristically after installed, it now defaults to blocking only trackers it already knows from automated testing before release. While it can still be configured to learn heuristically, it is no longer the default option because it can be exploited by third-parties to fingerprint the user based on trackers it blocks. So it seems that it no longer actually "learns to block", not by default.
- raverbashing 4y agoIt actually says that on their page (they call it "local learning")
- DeathArrow 4y ago>So it seems that it no longer actually "learns to block", not by default. It does learn, just not on your PC: By default, Privacy Badger receives periodic learning updates from Badger Sett, our Badger training project. This “remote learning” automatically discovers trackers present on thousands of the most popular sites on the Web. Privacy Badger no longer learns from your browsing by default, as “local learning” may make you more identifiable to websites. You may want to opt back in to local learning if you regularly browse less popular websites. To do so, visit your Badger’s options page and mark the checkbox for learning to block new trackers from your browsing.
- smichel17 4y agoI'm hoping someone with technical knowledge of how Privacy Badger works will read this / be able to answer: With local learning disabled, is there any need for using the Privacy Badger add-on specifically? Would it be possible to distribute the tracker lists which are generated by Badger Sett in a format compatible with uBlock Origin? edit: Found that Badger Sett generates a json blob: https://github.com/EFForg/badger-sett/blob/master/results.json https://github.com/EFForg/badger-sett/blob/master/results.js... I am not that familiar with uBlock Origin's filtering syntax, but from a quick look, it seems like the json could be translated at least to the 'dynamic filtering' rules (accessible only when you enable "I am an advanced user"). Perhaps I'll open an issue.
- 2Gkashmiri 4y agoi've been using ublock origin for as long as i can remember, religiously on every browser i use and that means, i refuse to use browsers that support it fully. that said, i recently saw "localcdn" addon for firefox which i've started to use. don't know if it has made any improvement but why the hell not
- adjagu 4y agoHad not heard of LocalCDN[0] before. Currently using Decentraleyes[1] on mobile and desktop Firefox as well as recommending to everyone I know. At first glance LocalCDN looks like it could become a replacement for Decentraleyes. Does anyone have experience with both extensions? Personally I will wait to try LocalCDN until it becomes recommended by Mozilla and installable on mobile Firefox, but it has peaked my interest. Thank you for sharing it 2Gkashmiri. [0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/localcdn-fork-of-decentraleyes/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/localcdn-fork... [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes...
- 2Gkashmiri 4y agoi remember decentraleyes from when it came out but i never bothered with it. dunno why. i was an ABP user at first when that came out but i switched to ublock origin years ago. i was even a noscript user for a long time but being lazy, i stopped.
- pixxel 4y agoLocalCDN is an active fork of Decentraleyes. From memory it was forked back in the day to add a Chrome plugin (the original was Firefox only at the time). That’s from memory though, so please do a little research to confirm.
- Fat_Thor 4y agoOne of the less known features of Internet Explorer 9, released way back in 2011, was its Tracking Protection. In it, there was an option to turn on personalized tracking protection where it heuristically keep track of trackers that appear more than once on different sites and block it automatically. You can still find it in Internet Explorer 11. And prior, IE8 had a lot of features that was ahead of its time. IIRC, IE8 was one of the first browsers to have ad-blocker built in. This was almost a decade before any other browser made tracking protection a built in feature.
- drudoo 4y agoI had to stop using Privacy Badger as a lot of sites would break. This was specifically when shopping, booking tickets or using government/banking sites. Extremely frustrating as most of the places it would break would be important sites where i really didn't want it to happen.
- 46_and_2 4y agoYou can just disable it for some sites, or play around with their trackers to see enabling which fixes your website. I've seen it break some shopping sites too, but that's been mostly on rare occasions for me.
- drudoo 4y agoI know and I did that. But when I daily had it break sites it got too annoying. When important sites break half way through using them, it was more a hassle than a help.
- 46_and_2 4y agoUnderstandable, I had it break once during opening a pop-up third-party website while verifying a credit card transaction - very annoying indeed. But through some tinkering managed to catch and whitelist the third party site later (it was timing out so no easy feat) and haven't had similar problems in a while.
- WithinReason 4y agoWhen you have multiple similar extensions it can be a long process to figure out which one is breaking a site
- mid-kid 4y agoI've had more issues with some filter sources in ublock origin's default list. In particular Fanboy's lists, and some others, that just block classes, IDs and URLs with certain names and patterns that are "commonly" used for annoyances or ads, but are so aggressive they often overdo it. Didn't realize endcards were a thing on youtube until a year ago because of it, and many sites break in subtle to unsubtle ways.
- jmiskovic 4y agoHappy user for several years now. I prefer this over other more popular blockers because Privacy Badger doesn't directly go after ads. It just blocks the tracking aspect; which in 99% cases of today's web advertising also prevents the ad from showing up. In general I consider ads to be unethical cognitive burden. The exception is if the site owner keeps the lights on by incorporating non-tracking advertising, it would feel scummy to block off their ads and just take the good content. On the other hand tracking users is an active hostile move and blocking it is the right choice. At least that's my reasoning for choosing Privacy Badger.
- Sakos 4y agoI'm totally fine with ads as long as they aren't intrusive (pop-ups are the worst). Sites should be able to finance themselves without requiring a subscription, since it allows access to those with less financial means. I just don't want them to track what I do on the internet and as long as they do, I'll block all of them.
- specialist 4y agoYes and: I'm mostly okay with (non-obtrusive) contextual ads. Behavioral targeting is immoral, cannot be redeemed, and should be illegal.
- causi 4y agoIn general I consider ads to be unethical cognitive burden. You don't even have to go that far. They're attempted fraud. They are by and large lies intended to trick you into giving someone money.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoAds in general? Or specifically online ads? Or specifically online ads that use cookie tracking?
- behnamoh 4y ago
- user3939382 4y agoI use it and Decentral Eyes and uBlock Origin but it does get tiring how often these extensions break critical functionality on websites. Especially when I don’t discover the problem until I’m half way into a multipart form submission that can’t be refreshed, or an e-commerce transaction fails because it rapidly hands off between multiple third-party servers and one of them in the middle of the chain had some critical JavaScript path blocked. I still do it but it is a pain.
- cptskippy 4y agoI've been encountering more and more sites that will only work completely in Google Chrome. T-Mobile and Motorola.com are some of the larger examples I've come across.
- zucked 4y agoAgreed. Between browser extensions and DNS-based products (PiHole) the number of websites that simply refuse to function is quite high. Deciphering which part of my environment is breaking the site is more time consuming than I wish.
- Night_Thastus 4y agoWeird. When I first used both of those years ago I had issues, but it's been multiple years since I've had a site actually break because of either.
- pmontra 4y agoNot so weird. I unblocked all the important parts of the sites I use most (examples: Stripe's, PayPal's and my credit cards payment forms that sites redirect to) but I got a problem recently with a site that accepted an order but failed to redirect to some different payment processor. I had to send mail to cancel the order and place it again with Chrome on the next day. All it usually take is whitelist some site in uBlock and reload because usually sites accept orders only after getting a payment. That one was optimistic.
- MomoXenosaga 4y agoI have no illusion that true anonymity is even possible on the internet these days but if by any chance I can mildly inconvenience the marketing parasite with running a simple extension why not?
- sdfhdhjdw3 4y agoBecause random extensions are a liability, for example.
- msarrel 4y agoI've been using this extension for several years now. It works very well. The only time it doesn't work is when a site contains code specifically written to defeat it.
- louissan 4y agoGenuine question -- how is this different/better than/less good than Brave?
- topranks 4y agoThis is from the EFF, Brave is just iffy.
- behnamoh 4y agoEnglish please?
- nxte 4y agoI'm also wondering this. I use Brave and I'm wondering if adding Privacy Badger is overkill. I already use uBlock Origin and Decentraleyes.
- ghostwords 4y agoHi, Privacy Badger dev here. If you're happy with your setup, no need to install anything else. For reasons you might want to use Privacy Badger, see the following links: - https://privacybadger.org/#How-is-Privacy-Badger-different-from-Disconnect%2c-Adblock-Plus%2c-Ghostery%2c-and-other-blocking-extensions https://privacybadger.org/#How-is-Privacy-Badger-different-f... - https://privacybadger.org/#Is-Privacy-Badger-compatible-with-other-extensions%2c-including-other-adblockers https://privacybadger.org/#Is-Privacy-Badger-compatible-with...
- fritigern 4y agoI use uBlock Origin with Firefox. Is Privacy Badger worth adding on top of it?
- guerrilla 4y agoI love Privacy Badger and have been using it for years now. If I ever do see an ad, that ad is completely irrelevant and has no idea what I want, which I just love. I hate the advertising industry in general but at least being able to keep the creepiness is a big plus.