Privacy Badger

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Privacy Badger
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300px
Developer(s) Electronic Frontier Foundation
Initial release 1 May 2014; 10 years ago (2014-05-01)[1]
Stable release 1.7.0 / 6 April 2016; 8 years ago (2016-04-06)
Development status Active
Type Browser extension
License GNU GPL v3[2]
Alexa rank Increase 15,894 (Feb 2015)
Website eff.org/privacybadger
As of Aug 2015

Privacy Badger is a free software web browser extension for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox, created by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Its purpose is to block advertisements and tracking cookies that do not respect the Do Not Track setting in a user's web browser.[3] The alpha was released on 1 May 2014,[1] followed by a beta on 21 July 2014.[4] While some of its code is based on Adblock Plus, Privacy Badger only blocks those ads which come with embedded trackers.[3]

Description

EFF says, "If an advertiser seems to be tracking you across multiple websites without your permission, Privacy Badger automatically blocks that advertiser from loading any more content in your browser. To the advertiser, it's like you suddenly disappeared."[5]

Reception

Several publications reported on Privacy Badger in May 2014, following its release.

Ian Paul, for PC World, mentions that Privacy Badger "only blocks third-party tracking, not first party", and mentions that prevention of browser fingerprinting is planned for a future release.[6]

Ars Technica notes that if an advertiser makes a commitment to respect Do Not Track requests, their cookies will be unblocked from Privacy Badger.[7]

Nathan Willis, writing for LWN.net, describes the green, yellow and red sliders of the Privacy Badger menu as being a "nice visualization aid", making it easy for the user to toggle the trackers on and off, if desired - describing it as much easier to browse through than ad blocking addon interfaces.[8]

Kif Leswing writing for GigaOM writes that "Privacy Badger’s blacklist is generated through heuristic blocking, which means it gets better the longer it is used", and wrote in May 2014 that Privacy Badger "breaks a lot of websites", but considers it important as it is created by a non-profit company, and sums it up as "more than good enough".[9]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Privacy Badger license Electronic Frontier Foundation
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  5. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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