The EFF wants to make sure the sites won't track your activities without your consent

Jul 23, 2014 09:24 GMT  ·  By

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has released the Privacy Badger browser plug-in to public beta, after the tool has been in alpha testing since May.

The tool exposes how websites track your behavior and lets you control what information these sites can see.

This isn’t exactly an uncommon idea, in fact. There are other plugins out there that perform a similar service. EFF explains, however, that they all need some custom configuration to block non-consensual trackers. Privacy Badger, on the other hand, uses rigorous algorithmic and policy methods to detect and prevent such activities. “We’ll produce a codebase that could in fact be adopted by other extensions, or by mainstream browsers, to give users maximal control over who does and doesn’t get to know what they do online.”

The tool looks for third-party domains embedding images, scripts and advertising in pages. If the third-party server tracks someone’s activities without permission, Privacy Badger will automatically disallow content from that third-party tracker.

There is some content that will be permitted. For instance, embedded maps, images and fonts that are loaded from third-party sites are ok, although all tracking cookies will be screened.

The app consists of a few sliders in a menu. Green means the site isn’t tracking your activities, yellow indicates that there is some tracking performed, but the site has been whitelisted, while red indicates you’re about to enter a site that heavily tracks your online habits and whose content is disallowed.

“Privacy Badger was launched in an alpha version less than three months ago, and already more than 150,000 users have installed the extension. Today's beta release includes a feature that automatically limits the tracking function of social media widgets, like the Facebook ‘Like’ button, replacing them with a stand-in version that allows you to ‘like’ something but prevents the social media tool from tracking your reading habits,” the EFF writes in its announcement.

On top of being a way to give users the necessary knowledge about the type of sites they visit, Privacy Badger is also a way to fight against the decision many companies have taken to completely ignore the “Do Not Track” requests made via their browsers. With this tool, whether the site wants to respect your will or not, will no longer mean much since they’ll be getting no information from you.

“Users who install Privacy Badger aren't just getting more privacy and a better browsing experience for themselves—they are providing incentives for improved privacy practices and respect for Do Not Track choices across the Internet, Using Privacy Badger helps to make the Web as a whole better for everyone,” said EFF technology Projects Director Peter Eckersely.

You can find Privacy Badger for download here.

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