EFF launches Chrome and Firefox extension to protect your privacy

The EFF released the new browser extension, called Privacy Badger 1.0 Thursday.

There are a lot of privacy tools available already that promise to block a whole range of ads, but the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) long-awaited Privacy Badger extension has finally officially launched after more than a year in testing.

If a particular section of a Web page is vital to the content (like if it’s an embedded map, for example, versus a script loading a block of ads), then it will strip out the tracking information and cookies but allow connection to the content.

Privacy Badger 1.0 works in tandem with the new Do Not Track (DNT) policy, announced earlier this week by EFF and a coalition of Internet companies.

Privacy Badger is not an ad blocker. Even if you know what’s up, changing browser settings to make yourself safe is essentially impossible.

Privacy Badger inspects third party sites for a commitment to honor that request under the DNT Policy; if it finds one, it will unblock that third party by default.

The advertising industry has proposed opt outs that are better described as “pretend not to track”, with an emphasis on hiding the symptoms of tracking rather than actually preventing it. But users still need a way to opt-out of the non-consensual collection of their data.

“To be clear, EFF isn’t against websites seeking to build businesses around advertising”, EFF stated.

“Although we like Disconnect, AdBlock Plus, Ghostery and similar products”, they say, noting that Privacy Badger is based on the ABP code, none of those add-ons suited the folks at the EFF – who doubt netizens’ ability to configure them to block non-consensual trackers. This new standard for Web browsing aims to protect users from having their online activity tracked by encouraging them to enable their Do Not Track setting in their browsers or download the Privacy Badger plug-in. Those are two of the newest ways that the tracking industry has devices to follow what you do online.

Available for Google Chrome and Firefox browsers, the extension will help users detect and individually block websites that track their online habits.