Privacy Badger 1.0 [LWN.net]

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has announced the 1.0 release of the Privacy Badger browser extension. "As you browse the Web, Privacy Badger looks at any third party domains that are loaded on a given site and determines whether or not they appear to be tracking you (e.g. by setting cookies that could be used for tracking, or fingerprinting your browser). If the same third party domain appears to be tracking you on three or more different websites, Privacy Badger will conclude that the third party domain is a tracker and block future connections to it." The extension is distributed under GPLv3; see this page for more information.

to post comments

Privacy Badger 1.0

Posted Aug 7, 2015 13:30 UTC (Fri) by heftig (subscriber, #73632) [Link] (6 responses)

Seems like a shame they used the bloated AdBlock Plus as a base instead of something leaner like uBlock.

Privacy Badger 1.0

Posted Aug 7, 2015 15:08 UTC (Fri) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

See this Hacker News comment: Only the Chrome extension of Privacy Badger uses ABP code. And it only uses it for managing the blocklists it creates. Most of the function of Privacy Badger is run separately from the ABP code, and to be honest my first task for the next version is to get rid of ABP completely :)

Privacy Badger 1.0

Posted Aug 7, 2015 16:47 UTC (Fri) by MoSal (guest, #103113) [Link] (4 responses)

Why implement a new extension at all?

I run multiple browser sessions with varying privacy/blocking requirements. uBlock Origin (the fork/branch maintained by the original author of uBlock) implements all the features I need. It replaced 3-4 extensions i've been using for years including NoScript and RequestPolicy.

I don't see myself going back to installing multiple extensions that don't integrate well with each other and add a lot of overhead. I'm sure many others share that sentiment.

Privacy Badger 1.0

Posted Aug 8, 2015 12:27 UTC (Sat) by ledow (guest, #11753) [Link] (1 responses)

I used to use Opera.

It was able to do all this, by default, with no extensions whatsoever, years before Firefox was even a thing.

But everyone hated on it, for no real reason, and never really supported it.

Then some idiots sacked the dev team, ruined it but turning it into a Chrome-a-like, and now I'm waiting for the Vivaldi browser (written by the original Opera people) to get back up to par.

I find it cute that people think that tabbed browsing, private tabs, being able to rearrange tabs, being able to switch to developer mode, being able to block ads or make them "play-only-on-click" by default, etc. are things that only "modern" browsers have had and/or are things you need plugins and extensions for.

Privacy Badger 1.0

Posted Aug 8, 2015 16:20 UTC (Sat) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

To be fair, Opera isn't unique in that regard: Internet Explorer 6 also had better built in cookie/javascript controls than Firefox ever has.

Privacy Badger 1.0

Posted Aug 10, 2015 20:46 UTC (Mon) by yhager (guest, #50165) [Link] (1 responses)

What's the difference between uBlock and uBlock Origin?

Privacy Badger 1.0

Posted Aug 10, 2015 21:06 UTC (Mon) by rwhogg (guest, #103069) [Link]

The maintainer. The feature sets are not exactly the same, but one was forked from the other.

The two maintainers have had some disagreements over who's really in charge and who should benefit from user donations, but it looks like for all intents and purposes they're going to split for good.

(Sources: https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock, https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock)

In other news

Posted Aug 7, 2015 15:13 UTC (Fri) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link] (1 responses)

Good timing for this release. Other third-party cookie news:

Documents released by Edward Snowden have revealed that the National Security Agency, and its Australian, British, Canadian, and New Zealand equivalents, routinely monitor the Internet for the identifiers that are contained in advertising and tracking cookies. Once collected, the identifiers are stored in government databases and used to develop patterns of life, or the chains of activities that individuals engage in when they use Internet-capable devices.

Half Baked: The Opportunity to Secure Cookie-Based Identifiers from Passive Surveillance

Remember, the more other users who are running the same privacy tools you do, the harder you are to track. So stick a tracking alert on your site and clean up the system for everyone (and save ad-supported content, but I think I already covered that.)

In other news

Posted Aug 10, 2015 7:00 UTC (Mon) by gnu (guest, #65) [Link]

Thanks for posting the links.

Privacy Badger 1.0

Posted Aug 7, 2015 21:14 UTC (Fri) by jberkus (guest, #55561) [Link]

I compliment the EFF team on writing user docs for Privacy Badger with the non-technical user in mind. It's one of the few times I've seen documentation I could give my father-in-law on anything that was related to open source or security, let alone both. Good job, guys.

Privacy Badger 1.0

Posted Aug 8, 2015 7:40 UTC (Sat) by alankila (guest, #47141) [Link]

I tried this out on a few sites. After blocking everything indiscriminately, I still see the stuff I want to see, but no ads whatsoever, and load times are like 3 times better.

Privacy Badger 1.0

Posted Aug 8, 2015 20:04 UTC (Sat) by tonyblackwell (guest, #43641) [Link]

It won't download for me using the link in the announcement. Gets almost to the end, then reports there was a connection problem. Fails at exactly the same point with various tries over a couple of days. Something broken on the EFF site?

LWN

Posted Aug 13, 2015 5:17 UTC (Thu) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] (6 responses)

Very nice to see that Privacy Badger is giving a beautiful green "0" for the number of tracking cookies needing to be blocked on LWN.

LWN

Posted Aug 13, 2015 6:05 UTC (Thu) by steveriley (guest, #83540) [Link] (5 responses)

Then perhaps you should replace Privacy Badger with uBlock Origin, which is currently blocking two scripts on LWN:

http://i.imgur.com/21vDn3S.png

LWN

Posted Aug 13, 2015 10:48 UTC (Thu) by zyga (subscriber, #81533) [Link]

He may have Adblock of some kind installed at the same time. What happens then is that those get blocked _before_ the badger extensions gets to see them. This would explain why he saw zero blocked items.

LWN

Posted Aug 13, 2015 18:02 UTC (Thu) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] (3 responses)

I guess I'm not seeing those because I have ads turned off. When I turn them back on, I see it blocking some scripts.

LWN

Posted Aug 15, 2015 5:58 UTC (Sat) by steveriley (guest, #83540) [Link] (2 responses)

Huh, I didn't know LWN has a configuration setting to block ads. I just looked and yes, "professional hacker" level and above can block them. I've been using a script to generate an /etc/hosts that blocks a lot of stuff at the DNS level; that must explain why I've never seen ads here previously.

https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthread.php?56419

LWN

Posted Aug 17, 2015 11:06 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link] (1 responses)

>I've been using a script to generate an /etc/hosts that blocks a lot of stuff at the DNS level

Does that not just leave you with errors taking the place where the ads would otherwise be?

LWN

Posted Aug 17, 2015 19:42 UTC (Mon) by steveriley (guest, #83540) [Link]

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I think it depends on how the ad's HTML and scripting are coded. Some ads completely disappear; the space they would have otherwise occupied is now filled with the page's normal content. Other ads -- mostly those delivered in frames, I suspect -- show instead the brower's "can't load page" error.