Add-on can also be used to enhance privacy by avoiding unwanted tracking from intrusive CDN services

Mar 30, 2016 10:04 GMT  ·  By

There's a cool Firefox extension on the Mozilla Add-ons portal that you might want to look into if you're a privacy freak and would also like to speed up page load times.

The add-on, called Decentraleyes, works by intercepting requests to CDNs (content delivery networks) for commonly used JavaScript resources. It blocks these requests and replaces them with local versions of the JavaScript libraries, making sure the websites you're navigating won't break without them.

This speeds up page load times because pages load local resources in a matter of milliseconds, rather than downloading them from online servers, which takes a considerable longer time.

The secondary effect of this behavior is that users also gain some extra privacy because these CDNs are also in the habit of tracking users and the websites for which they request the resources.

Decentraleyes supports 9 CDNs and 14 JS libraries

The latest version of Decentraleyes (1.2.2) comes with support for the following CDNs: Google Hosted Libraries, Microsoft Ajax CDN, CDNJS (Cloudflare), jQuery CDN (MaxCDN), jsDelivr (MaxCDN), Yandex CDN, Baidu CDN, Sina Public Resources, and UpYun Libraries.

Additionally, the following JavaScript libraries are included in Decentraleyes' local repository: AngularJS, Backbone.js, Dojo, Ember.js, Ext Core, jQuery, jQuery UI, Modernizr, MooTools, Prototype, Scriptaculous, SWFObject, Underscore.js, and Web Font Loader.

The add-on can be used alongside your adblockers and helps keep out intrusive Web services that have an affinity for tracking more than they should. Other similar privacy-protecting Firefox add-ons that can be used together with Decentraleyes are NoScript, uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, RequestPolicy, BetterPrivacy, and Self-Destructing Cookies.

Other add-on plans include support for advanced policy management, smarter resource version interpretation, and support for custom, importable, library repositories.

Decentraleyes works out of the box with no configuration needed, but a settings page is provided via the Firefox Add-ons page (screenshot below).

Decentraleyes settings page
Decentraleyes settings page

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Decentraleyes boosts page load times and enhances privacy
Decentraleyes settings page
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