Chrome/Firefox/Opera: When Privacy Badger launched a few years ago, it was already a great tool to block third-party trackers, speed up the web and stop sites from watching your every move while you browse. The latest version is a huge improvement, in almost every way.
Privacy Badger 2.0 comes with some speed improvements that you may not notice right away — ultimately the tool does what it does faster than before, so your browsing experience speeds up a bit. In their announcement, the EFF says:
Third-party tracking — that is, when advertisers and websites track your browsing activity across the web without your knowledge, control, or consent — is an alarmingly widespread practice in online advertising. Privacy Badger spots and then blocks third-party domains that seem to be tracking your browsing habits (e.g. by setting cookies that could be used for tracking, or by 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.
Privacy Badger always tells how many third-party domains it has detected and whether or not they seem to be trackers. Further, users have control over how Privacy Badger treats these domains, with options to block a domain entirely, block just cookies, or allow a domain.
Similarly, the new version also comes with protection against “ping” tracking and WebRTC leaking, so even if you’re using a proxy that’s a little less than well-designed, you won’t leak your IP address. Also, Privacy Badger also now features import/export tools, so you can take everything the add-on learned on one browser and add it to another — like a computer at home versus a computer at work — so you don’t have to start from scratch with each installation.
It’s a worthwhile update, and you can grab it at the links below. For more privacy-protecting browser add-ons, check out our full rundown here.
Privacy Badger [Electronic Frontier Foundation]
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