Happy user for several years now. I prefer this over other more popular blockers because Privacy Badger doesn't directly go after ads. It just blocks the tracking aspect; which in 99% cases of today's web advertising also prevents the ad from showing up.
In general I consider ads to be unethical cognitive burden. The exception is if the site owner keeps the lights on by incorporating non-tracking advertising, it would feel scummy to block off their ads and just take the good content. On the other hand tracking users is an active hostile move and blocking it is the right choice. At least that's my reasoning for choosing Privacy Badger.
Same here. I use it for anti-tracking, and uBlock Origin for primary ads, and PiHole for anything that slips through those two.
Ads are a plague. They waste screen space, they're often virus-laden traps, they look ugly and ruin the look of a good website, they're often scams, etc.
I pay for the the internet service that sends the ads to me, the screen the ads show up on, the computer that requests the ads and the electricity that powers the computer.
I am not paying for all that just to get ads shoved in my face. If they want donations or a subscription, fine. Understandable. But no ads.
I'm totally fine with ads as long as they aren't intrusive (pop-ups are the worst). Sites should be able to finance themselves without requiring a subscription, since it allows access to those with less financial means. I just don't want them to track what I do on the internet and as long as they do, I'll block all of them.
> it would feel scummy to block off their ads and just take the good content
Nothing is scummier than web site owners thinking they are entitled to our attention, to say nothing of selling it to the highest bidder without our consent.
There is zero obligation on our part to pay attention to ads. Zero. There is absolutely no shame in not wanting to be subjected to such noise. They'd very much enjoy it if we paid attention but they aren't entitled to make a single cent off of us without our consent.
> In general I consider ads to be unethical cognitive burden.
I agree.
> The exception is if the site owner keeps the lights on by incorporating non-tracking advertising, it would feel scummy to block off their ads and just take the good content.
I disagree - if content cannot survive without advertisement, then we're better off without it anyway. Non-tracking advertising is less bad than advertising, but it's still intrusive and not-called-for, just like all advertising.
You mean if the content does not cater to people who are well-off enough to pay for it with money?
There are many people who simply don't have the financial means to support all the content they like. Does that content not deserve to exist? Should quality internet content really be a class question?
This is a really disingenuous argument that can justify all sorts of ridiculous stuff, the least of which would be the predatory and toxic mobile game industry
Im pretty sure predatory and toxic mobile game industry would fall under the same (or worse) categorization as ads, so would fall under the same logic of "if you cant afford to run your website without doing something unethical, then your website doesnt deserve to run"
Amen to that. The toxic casino games have choked out 99.99% of the actual games, and that model is now spreading out to other platforms like a cancer.
Back to ads, it sounds like living in a corporate dystopian nightmare where your every move is tracked and you're constantly manipulated is somehow the "woke" option in this discussion. Great.
I could easily host a local Facebook-esque site for a hundred friends and family for less than $10 a month. I wouldn't need all their apps and every website they use to participate in a spy network to make it work, either.
Niche knowledge sites don't use a lot of bandwidth, and in a lot of cases can easily survive on the donations of niche knowledge fanatics (especially after the rise of patreon and substack.) The real niche knowledge sites who can't survive without advertisement are trade magazines, and if the ads are specific to the niche (rather than generic intrusive ad auction chum), their readers value the ads almost as much as they value the content.
There are noncommercial models for broadcast media, and the fact that some countries ended up with the vast wasteland[1] that is commercially-supported broadcast television and radio isn't an inevitability. It was made to happen, by commercial interests. It could well have been different in the US, and still is in numerous other regions.
See Robert W. McChesney's Telecommunications, mass media and democracy : the battle for control of U.S. broadcasting, 1928-35 (1995)
I understand you made your point in good faith and I appreciate that you made me think about the difference between GP "lie" and "creating awareness".
Nevertheless, I believe that giving the awareness part a free pass, can be a slippery slope. I didn't want to think about plumbing or the Proposition 4 or plastic surgery. So unless I search for either of those two I feel it's an intrusion to force those thoughts on me.
The "lie" is the unstated implication that doing these things the ads recommend will serve your own interests, and not just the interests of the advertisers.
"Creating awareness" would be handing out unsolicited facts with a neutral point of view. Most ads are more in the nature of unsolicited and manipulative advice from someone who does not have your best interest in mind.
imo ads - online or offline - are fine, but the internet has enabled advertisers to use so many shady tricks to milk more data (and money) out of consumers.
I’m completely desensitized to ads and know people who won’t click on ads at all. I wonder how effective ads are then.
> I prefer this over other more popular blockers because Privacy Badger doesn't directly go after ads. It just blocks the tracking aspect
This is the exact reason why I use DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials instead of an ad-blocker. Whenever I mention that I don’t block ads out of principle, I get down-voted a lot :-D
I use it and Decentral Eyes and uBlock Origin but it does get tiring how often these extensions break critical functionality on websites.
Especially when I don’t discover the problem until I’m half way into a multipart form submission that can’t be refreshed, or an e-commerce transaction fails because it rapidly hands off between multiple third-party servers and one of them in the middle of the chain had some critical JavaScript path blocked.
I've been encountering more and more sites that will only work completely in Google Chrome. T-Mobile and Motorola.com are some of the larger examples I've come across.
Agreed. Between browser extensions and DNS-based products (PiHole) the number of websites that simply refuse to function is quite high. Deciphering which part of my environment is breaking the site is more time consuming than I wish.
Not so weird. I unblocked all the important parts of the sites I use most (examples: Stripe's, PayPal's and my credit cards payment forms that sites redirect to) but I got a problem recently with a site that accepted an order but failed to redirect to some different payment processor. I had to send mail to cancel the order and place it again with Chrome on the next day. All it usually take is whitelist some site in uBlock and reload because usually sites accept orders only after getting a payment. That one was optimistic.
While there is likely to be overlap between the various advertising/tracker lists and Privacy Badger, regardless of whether you enable learning locally, Privacy Badger can automatically discover new trackers that list-based blockers don’t know about.
Besides automatic tracker blocking, Privacy Badger comes with privacy features like click-to-activate replacements for potentially useful trackers (video players, comments sections like Disqus, etc.), and link cleaning on Facebook and Google.
Privacy Badger is also a political tool. By using Privacy Badger, you support the Electronic Frontier Foundation [1]. Privacy Badger sends the Global Privacy Control [2] signal to opt you out of data sharing and selling, and the Do Not Track [3] signal to tell companies not to track you. If trackers ignore your wishes, Privacy Badger will learn to block them. The idea isn't to block all advertising but rather to promote a better Web.
I'm not sure what you are asking. What am I recommending?
All extensions that modify page state are fingerprintable. Privacy Badger's local learning creates the possibility of additional fingerprinting. As discussed in the blog post you linked to, we decided that we can deliver most of the benefits of automatic learning without local learning. We further believe that local learning can offer benefits that outweigh the risk of additional fingerprinting, which is why we kept the ability to re-enable this feature at the user's discretion. Does this answer your question?
We've been trying to communicate that nothing essential changed, Privacy Badger still learns automatically, but we clearly have a ways to go before this becomes generally understood.
Has there been any study as to how closely Privacy Badger converges to list-based blockers like uBlock Origin given enough time? Is that at all a metric you use in development?
Do any significant disadvantages of Privacy Badger stand out to you, contrasted with uBlock Origin? The biggest problem I can think of is that uBlock Origin will immediately prevent me from loading content that could be dangerous, while Privacy Badger has to visit dangerous content enough times to learn to block it, which is less good for security.
On the other hand the big advantage to me for Privacy Badger is that it doesn't depend on manually-curated lists. uBlock Origin nicely wraps the block lists but when it comes down to it you are giving control over your browsing experience to the random volunteers building these lists, which, who knows? Though I'm not accusing anyone of anything.
It may be that Privacy Badger is more likely to break the Web than manual list-based blockers, just due to the nature of automated learning.
Regarding having to see dangerous content multiple times:
- Privacy Badger gets remote learning at this point from Badger Sett, so most common trackers should be accounted for.
- Privacy Badger isn't so much a security tool as a privacy tool. Yes, blocking trackers is good for security, but it's not the primary objective. The primary objective is to stop non-consensual pervasive tracking. In this light, having to see tracking a few times before deciding to block it is a reasonable approach.
Cookie-AutoDelete. Click it to whitelist a website so that its cookies and local data aren't deleted.
Why would I allow all websites I visit to store things on your computer? I have about 20~ domains whitelisted (which I've added and maintained over years). The rest will be forced to forget me and not be allowed to create profiles and sell my interests and habits to the highest bidder.
Works great with Firefox Multi-Account Containers: this lets me be stayed logged into an account (eg Google) but only for a subset of services (Google Drive, Gmail) – not Google Search: why would I want Google to keep an history of my queries?
Works great with https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu (I really don't care about them since they're auto deleted anyway). I wish uBlock, Cookie Auto Delete and I don't care about cookies would be installed by default with Firefox.
Firefox has this feature natively, no need for an add-on.
In Privacy & Security settings set it to clear all browsing data when Firefox closes, and simply add exceptions for whichever domains you want. This also has the advantage of clearing some things CAD is unable to due to limite of the WebExtension APIs.
1. This extension (CAD) allows to auto delete after a delay (15 seconds by default). So no need to close the browser to delete trackers, and you can re-open a tab without being immediately logged out
2. Exceptions in Firefox preferences don't support regular expressions, so you need to whitelist both https:// and http:// and you can't tune things for subdomains. CAD is much more powerful, with custom rules (*.google.com), white and greylists, etc https://github.com/Cookie-AutoDelete/Cookie-AutoDelete/wiki/...
3. CAD has the option to keep a log of deletions and restore the deleted data/cookies.
4. And CAD supports containers, so you can open tabs of the same URL but only be logged in the one you want (multiple Gmail accounts but remain incognito in Search, Maps, Youtube and other Google properties).
i have made it a habit to use firefox in private browsing mode all the time. i know i can use "private browsing.autostart", i was a big user of that for many many years but ineed some persistent logins.
private browsing i do as in, i start my pc, firefox starts on its own so i do ctrl+shift+p.
then i go about my day using this window and more such windows.
whenever i have to wind down for the day or want to get rid of a session, i just close the windows and i am clean.
i understand people use cookies auto delete like you mentioned but for my use case, i dont even bother. i can sign in, do what i need to do and i dont care about signing out or even being tracked across sessions because sessions are not persistent across logins
sure... i get that.... its not for everyone.
you can do one thing, keep one browser window for websites that you absolutely need to be logged in to always.
for general browsing/surfing, etc, use the private window. for example, this means you arent logged in to youtube or google search while you go about your day while you can still use gmail in a container....
the normal not-container browsing needs cookie removal and stuff
Maybe not for just "regular joe" but Arkenfox maintains a good list of extensions to use for privacy, and more importantly, which ones really don't add that much with recent Firefox updates:
This add-on shaped the privacy-positive landscape for browsers upon it's release, but the features have be made obsolete with the latest browser isolation and that most entities have migrated to bundled JavaScript and off of CDNs.
I like the idea of LocalCDN not necessarily for privacy reasons, but for performance. Now that shared browser caches are a thing of the past, it feels incredibly wasteful how often we have to download common libraries and fonts.
I'd like to keep 500MB or so of data locally and just have it replace the network requests when they're made. I'd be curious how much data that might end up saving after a month or year of browsing.
Only that I have an extension installed. Presumably the libraries cached would be the same for all users. So assuming an install base of >10,000, I'm not particularly bothered about it.
I'm more interested in techniques for faster page loading.
> If as you browse the web, the same source seems to be tracking your browser across different websites, then Privacy Badger springs into action, telling your browser not to load any more content from that source. And when your browser stops loading content from a source, that source can no longer track you. Voila!
So, for example, does it stop loading fonts? Or CDN-hosted assets?
Last I checked they relied on DNS-level blocking , like ublock origin, in addition to some fancy replacements for widgets like disqus. I don't think privacy badger blocks loading content from most CDNs but it may block cookies from them.
I used it for short time few years ago, but stopped after it was breaking sites by blocking regular images from CDN. I guess I could have made a whitelist or otherwise tweak its behaviour, but I don't have time to babysit software which probably brought only marginal benefits over uO filters anyway.
I had to stop using Privacy Badger as a lot of sites would break. This was specifically when shopping, booking tickets or using government/banking sites. Extremely frustrating as most of the places it would break would be important sites where i really didn't want it to happen.
Hi, Privacy Badger dev here. I hear you, and we're working on breaking fewer sites while blocking more trackers. For what it's worth, Privacy Badger now is better at both things than it was years ago, and it will be better yet next year.
I've had more issues with some filter sources in ublock origin's default list. In particular Fanboy's lists, and some others, that just block classes, IDs and URLs with certain names and patterns that are "commonly" used for annoyances or ads, but are so aggressive they often overdo it.
Didn't realize endcards were a thing on youtube until a year ago because of it, and many sites break in subtle to unsubtle ways.
You can just disable it for some sites, or play around with their trackers to see enabling which fixes your website. I've seen it break some shopping sites too, but that's been mostly on rare occasions for me.
I know and I did that. But when I daily had it break sites it got too annoying. When important sites break half way through using them, it was more a hassle than a help.
Understandable, I had it break once during opening a pop-up third-party website while verifying a credit card transaction - very annoying indeed. But through some tinkering managed to catch and whitelist the third party site later (it was timing out so no easy feat) and haven't had similar problems in a while.
I love Privacy Badger and have been using it for years now. If I ever do see an ad, that ad is completely irrelevant and has no idea what I want, which I just love. I hate the advertising industry in general but at least being able to keep the creepiness is a big plus.
I have no illusion that true anonymity is even possible on the internet these days but if by any chance I can mildly inconvenience the marketing parasite with running a simple extension why not?
i've been using ublock origin for as long as i can remember, religiously on every browser i use and that means, i refuse to use browsers that support it fully.
that said, i recently saw "localcdn" addon for firefox which i've started to use. don't know if it has made any improvement but why the hell not
Had not heard of LocalCDN[0] before. Currently using Decentraleyes[1] on mobile and desktop Firefox as well as recommending to everyone I know. At first glance LocalCDN looks like it could become a replacement for Decentraleyes. Does anyone have experience with both extensions?
Personally I will wait to try LocalCDN until it becomes recommended by Mozilla and installable on mobile Firefox, but it has peaked my interest. Thank you for sharing it 2Gkashmiri.
LocalCDN is an active fork of Decentraleyes. From memory it was forked back in the day to add a Chrome plugin (the original was Firefox only at the time). That’s from memory though, so please do a little research to confirm.
i remember decentraleyes from when it came out but i never bothered with it. dunno why. i was an ABP user at first when that came out but i switched to ublock origin years ago. i was even a noscript user for a long time but being lazy, i stopped.
I've been using this extension for several years now. It works very well. The only time it doesn't work is when a site contains code specifically written to defeat it.
In October 2020, following security disclosures by the Google Security Team, Privacy Badger changed its default behavior. While it would previously learn to block new trackers heuristically after installed, it now defaults to blocking only trackers it already knows from automated testing before release. While it can still be configured to learn heuristically, it is no longer the default option because it can be exploited by third-parties to fingerprint the user based on trackers it blocks.
So it seems that it no longer actually "learns to block", not by default.
>So it seems that it no longer actually "learns to block", not by default.
It does learn, just not on your PC:
By default, Privacy Badger receives periodic learning updates from Badger Sett, our Badger training project. This “remote learning” automatically discovers trackers present on thousands of the most popular sites on the Web. Privacy Badger no longer learns from your browsing by default, as “local learning” may make you more identifiable to websites. You may want to opt back in to local learning if you regularly browse less popular websites. To do so, visit your Badger’s options page and mark the checkbox for learning to block new trackers from your browsing.
I'm hoping someone with technical knowledge of how Privacy Badger works will read this / be able to answer:
With local learning disabled, is there any need for using the Privacy Badger add-on specifically? Would it be possible to distribute the tracker lists which are generated by Badger Sett in a format compatible with uBlock Origin?
I am not that familiar with uBlock Origin's filtering syntax, but from a quick look, it seems like the json could be translated at least to the 'dynamic filtering' rules (accessible only when you enable "I am an advanced user"). Perhaps I'll open an issue.
> In the coming months, we will work on expanding the reach of Badger Sett beyond U.S.-centric websites to capture more trackers in our pre-trained lists.
From the URL it looks like that was written in 2020, but it's in the text the extension links to today. Does the reach of Badger Sett by now extend to the websites visited by users outside the US, or should such users turn on local learning to be protected?
I'm a happy user of Privacy Badger and didn't realise the behaviour had changed until today, when I clicked curiously on my badger icon! I've turned local learning back on and I'm looking forward to the feature below:
> In the longer term, we will be looking into privacy-preserving community learning. Community learning would allow users to share the trackers their Badgers learn about locally to improve the tracker list for all Privacy Badger users.
I moved to just using uBlock + noscript + containers. EFF people don't know how to audit things. It's better to use as few extensions as possible + put services you paid for into a Firefkx container to segregate the browser rather than try these half measures.
Also Firefox now builds in functionality similar to HTTPS everywhere:
I use Privacy Badger alone because (A) it's good enough, and (B) I want direct experience of what needs to get better. I previously used uMatrix (which is now advanced mode uBlock Origin as I understand it). I use AdGuard on iOS.
One of the less known features of Internet Explorer 9, released way back in 2011, was its Tracking Protection. In it, there was an option to turn on personalized tracking protection where it heuristically keep track of trackers that appear more than once on different sites and block it automatically. You can still find it in Internet Explorer 11. And prior, IE8 had a lot of features that was ahead of its time. IIRC, IE8 was one of the first browsers to have ad-blocker built in. This was almost a decade before any other browser made tracking protection a built in feature.
In general I consider ads to be unethical cognitive burden. The exception is if the site owner keeps the lights on by incorporating non-tracking advertising, it would feel scummy to block off their ads and just take the good content. On the other hand tracking users is an active hostile move and blocking it is the right choice. At least that's my reasoning for choosing Privacy Badger.