EFF Releases Privacy Badger 1.0 To Block ‘Sneakiest Kinds of Online Tracking’
The Electronic Frontier Foundation released a browser extension, Privacy Badger 1.0, that blocks “some of the sneakiest trackers that try to spy on” an individual’s Web browsing habits, an EFF news release said Thursday. More than 250,000 users installed the…
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Privacy Badger during alpha and beta releases, it said. The new extension “includes blocking of certain kinds of super-cookies and browser fingerprinting -- the latest ways that some parts of the online tracking industry try to follow Internet users from site to site,” it said. Users can sometimes see evidence that they are being tracked by advertisers and other third-parties online with ads that “follow you around the Web that seem to reflect your past browsing history,” said EFF Staff Technologist Cooper Quintin, the lead developer of Privacy Badger. The app will spot many trackers “following you without your permission, and will block them or screen out the cookies that do their dirty work,” Quintin said. The browser extension works in tandem with EFF’s new Do Not Track policy, the group said. Users can set the DNT flag or install privacy badger to signal they want to opt-out of online tracking, the release said. “Privacy Badger won’t block third-party services that promise to honor all DNT requests,” it said. “It’s time to put users back in control and stop surreptitious intrusive Internet data collection,” said EFF chief computer scientist Peter Eckersley, leader of the DNT project.