EFF releases Privacy Badger 2.0 for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera with new features
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Online tracking has been constant fodder for debate between privacy advocates and tech companies. And in its continued support of online privacy, Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit group at the forefront of digital rights advocacy, has now updated its anti-tracking extension for the Chrome, Firefox and Opera browsers.
Privacy Badger detects and blocks third-party domains that could be monitoring your browsing activity. The blocking phase occurs only when the tool finds that a certain domain has been tracking you on three or more websites. It will then sever the third-party domain’s link to your computer.
The extension puts an icon in the main toolbar of a browser and shows how many trackers have been blocked on a specific website. Privacy Badger 2.0 now brings with it a number of enhancements for users and developers such as:
- Support for incognito or private browsing
- Import/export capabilities to export a backup of what Privacy Badger has learned about your tracker-blocking needs and import that into another browser
- Fixes to break fewer websites, ensuring that you can both block trackers and enjoy rich content
- Improved user interface translation for non-English-speaking users
- Blocks WebRTC from leaking your IP address
- Blocks HTML5 ping tracking
- Notable speed improvements (Firefox only)
- Multi-process compatibility (E10S) (Firefox only)
- A single code base for both the Firefox and Chrome versions
However, Privacy Badger 2.0 does not seem to be working well on Firefox. Users have reported that the extension blocks Google Sheets even if the domain is on a white list. Other users have noticed that WebRTC is missing after installing the updated add-on. Although EFF considers Privacy Badger 2.0 a major release, it’s advisable to wait for a more stable release of the add-on.
Privacy Badger has been used to block online tracking, with the exception of online ads. EFF said in a blog post that the extension does not intend to block ads, but only to bar invasions of internet user privacy. That means Privacy Badger blocks trackers directly instead of scripts. EFF also calls on advertisers to help protect the privacy of users.
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