back to article EFF's Privacy Badger will block snooping ads and invisible trackers

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has launched a browser add-on to impede snooping efforts of advertisers and other third-party web trackers. The EFF has released the stable version of its browser add-on, branded Privacy Badger for some unknown reason, in order to “put an end to non-consensual browser tracking.” “Although we …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Vulture vs. Badger, who would win?

    The article gives me the message "Privacy Badger detected 3 potential trackers on this page".

  2. heyrick Silver badge

    "Privacy Badger will attempt to provide some incentive to snoopers by whitelisting services which have agreed to the standard."

    The complaint I often hear for ABP is that certain services are whitelisted, which can be turned off. And if devs go too far, a project is often forked with a "pure" version.

    Badger will whitelist services. Can we choose not? When will somebody understand that I am NOT happy allowing unknown code from unknown sources for unknown reasons just to punt some rubbish I wouldn't buy.

    1. Mark 85

      When in doubt.... there's always the HOSTS file.

      I should add that I've set my 3rd party to "prompt" and have been killing them off as I find them. Seems IE and Win7 do let some tracking cookies slip through if you merely set it to "block".

  3. John Sager

    Just trying it

    Running it on Firefox. It sees way more stuff than Ghostery but some of that is probably just off-site support stuff that a lot of websites use. It learns as it goes. Mine currently has a list of 155 from the relatively few websites I've visited so far (BBC, slashdot, Dilbert, Telegraph etc), but a lot of those are marked 'green', i.e. OK. Quite a few red ones too, including Google Analytics on this site!

    1. VinceH

      Re: Just trying it

      "Quite a few red ones too, including Google Analytics on this site!"

      That's not coming up here... unsurprisingly: NoScript is blocking it. However, I notice Ghostery still lists it even though the scripts are blocked. Which leads to an interesting comparison. Looking just at this page:

      With my normal settings:

      • Privacy Badger is only listing regmedia.co.uk (allowed)
      • Ghostery is listing DataPoint Media, DoubleClick and Google Analytics (all blocked)
      • NoScript is set to allow theregister.co.uk, but scripts are not allowed from admedo.com, dpmsrv.com, google-analytics.com and googletagservices.com

      I'm assuming the scripts from admedo.com and dpmsrv.com would be the source of the DataPoint and DoubleClick trackers if they weren't blocked from running. So while the three listed by Ghostery are effectively already blocked by NoScript, Ghostery is still able to detect that (without NoScript) those cookies could be put on my system - while Privacy Badger doesn't.

      I expect Privacy Badger would be able to detect them if I allowed the scripts to run given that yours is detecting the Google one - so a quick test: I've temporarily allowed all the scripts on this page to run. The results now are:

      • Privacy Badger is no longer listing regmedia.co.uk, and it's listing pool.admedo.com as a potential tracker, and listing www.google-analytics.com and www.googletagservices.com under "The following domains don't appear to be tracking you."
      • Ghostery is listing DataPoint Media, DoubleClick and Google Analytics (all blocked)

      All three Privacy Badger results have green bars (because I have yet to teach it anything) - but the differences between it and Ghostery in the above are interesting.

  4. Wade Burchette

    What about a privacy badger for Windows 10?

    Can the EFF make a program that blocks all the analytics, telemetry, and tracking done in Windows 10? I figure that sooner, not later, Microsoft will wise up HOSTS file blocking and ignore it for all internet requests from the OS itself. So maybe the EFF can team up with router manufacturers and add a privacy badger setting in routers. The collective wail from the marketing industry would be worth it; which will be followed by lobbyists "informing" elected representatives how bad it is by means of a large briefcase full of money.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What about a privacy badger for Windows 10?

      "Can the EFF make a program that blocks all the analytics, telemetry, and tracking done in Windows 10?"

      Why bother when you can disable them just by using the setting in the OS.

      Have you run it?

      Have you looked through the 13 pages of security settings and disabled all that you want?

      Have you listened to the latest Security Now podcast in which Steve Gibson takes you through the settings and what they mean?

  5. Missing Semicolon Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    It's brilliant.

    I've binned ABP and NoScript to try it out properly. After an initial hour of horror as the full nastiness of the web assaullts you, it learns. Now, my browsing is annoyance-free, and I didn't need to muck about with it to make it behave.

    For extra points, it doesn't break eCommerce sites like NoScript does, and I suspect it's a lot less resource-hungy, too.

    The only thing it seems to be failing at is blocking click-jacking popups. Maybe that will get better.

    I'll be installing it on all the rellies' PC's soon.

  6. vgrig_us

    Would you stop with...

    @Alexander J Martin: Would you stop with "Google-backed" BS? You're just repeating a lie...

    Here, reposting this for you:

    "In 2011, the EFF received $1 million from Google as part of a settlement of a class action related to privacy issues involving Google Buzz" - is this the backing you're talking about? :-P

    Another donation as a result of the settlement: "3taps and its founder, Greg Kidd, have agreed to pay craigslist $1 million, all of which must then be paid by craigslist to the EFF"

    Doesn't matter - In 2012, the EFF received $250,000 from Mark Cuban and $250,000 from Markus Persson. The list of corporate members is on EFF website btw.

    1. ratfox

      Re: Would you stop with...

      Yeah, I missed that episode too. Hasn't the EFF existed for much longer than Google?

  7. Seen_Canary

    Learns from your browsing

    I've been using Privacy Badger since El Reg first mentioned it months ago.

    The biggest problem I now have is that it has decided to block regmedia.co.uk based on the last couple of months and attempts to reset the slider to allow it (which worked about a month ago) and whitelisting the domain still don't let me see any images that aren't references to other domains.

    Other than a single slight case of false-positive though, it's been really great.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    pubads?

    Installed it 10 mins ago.....where are the pub ads? WHERE DAMN YOU!!

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Privacy Badger VS Revolver Ocelot

    sounds like a new end of level boss in the next Metal Gear game.

  10. Sporkinum

    tried it.. didn't work

    I figured i'd give it a try. It does this... "Warning: Privacy Badger Alpha may not work as expected with your third-party cookie settings. You may find some bugs, which you can report here. Thanks for your help!" It changes color and changes the number, but all the buttons in its interface don't do anything. I run a butt load of filters, etc. Cookies are accept third party cookies from visited, and keep until ask me every time. I really don't want to change my cookie settings in the off chance that privacy badger can do as good a job as I do. I am guessing this is meant to take over cookie handling as they say you can run it concurrently with ABP, noscript, etc., since most people just run those and use the default cookie handling, which is to allow everything.

  11. Spaceman Spiff

    We'll see how it goes. I just installed it on my Linux Firefox 38.1.0 instance. Hopefully the patched FF 38.1.1 version will arrive in a day or so.

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