Summary
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has released a new version of Privacy Badger that updates how it fights “link tracking” across a number of Google products. With this update, Privacy Badger removes tracking from links in Google Docs, Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Images results. Privacy Badger now also removes tracking from links added after scrolling through Google Search results.
Link tracking is a technique that allows a company to follow you whenever you click on a link to leave its website. Google uses different techniques for link tracking in different browsers and products. One common approach is to surreptitiously redirect the outgoing request through the tracker’s own servers.
The EFF says that there is virtually no benefit to you when this happens, and that the added complexity mostly just helps Google learn more about your browsing.
The new version of Privacy Badger works by blocking all Google link tracking requests at the network layer. This is a more reliable way to prevent tracking, but it is not compatible with Google’s Manifest V3 (MV3) extension API.
The EFF says that it would like to see this important functionality gap resolved before MV3 becomes mandatory for all extensions.
Privacy Badger is a free and open-source browser extension that helps to protect your privacy online. It is available for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.
More info and installation links: https://privacybadger.org/
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Is it relevant to use privacy badger for those who only open Google sites in a containerised tab?
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If Google tracks you using more than just cookies (probably), then yes
I didn’t know EFF was behind privacy badger, I’ve seen the extension around but never looked into it
I’ve had the extension forever and had no idea either. Learn something new every day.
Not trying to be rude here, but it does say “by EFF technologists” when installing the extension. Also their welcome page for the extension after installing it, states “” A project of the EFF".
I hope these things are read beforehand and just not skipped, ignored or just installed quickly before taking some time to look around / researched.
Fair enough and great points. In my defense I’ve had it installed for ages and the memory (mine, not my computer’s) isn’t what it used to be.
EDIT: And to be clear I’m not the one who downvoted you.
There’s always that “funny” person downvoting every comment
Same, I’ve been using it for a few months now. Trust level has definitely gone up now that I know.
Do I need this when I already use uBlock Origin + ClearURLs
Is ClearURLs even needed?
I have like every filter on uBlock Origin filtered except the language ones. Yet when I go on Amazon, I get a huge nasty tracking url still. ClearURLs cleans it up for me, otherwise I wouldn’t really need it. Not sure why uBlock doesn’t do that.
I love your username, get a chuckle everytime I see it.
Can you do this with uBlock Origin in medium blocking mode. Also with Skip Redirect or Fast Forward?
Can we get rid of the “highlight and scroll to some text on Wikipedia” shit? It doesn’t work with dark mode and I want to read the whole article, not the sentence Google’s slapdick language model thinks is the answer.
That only works in Chrome (Chromium?) anyway.
It happens in Safari on iOS and it annoys the fuck out of me. On desktop, I just don’t use Google — Startpage is my default search engine. But on iOS, you’re stuck.
I already habe UbO and ClearURLs. Would this be redundant?
You can replace ClearURLs with a filter list for uBlock Origin. Less CPU resources used.
Besides the new functionality what’s the different between this and the DDG extension?
EFF isn’t trying to make money off of you or willing to compromise your privacy for profit when necessary.
https://techcrunch.com/2022/05/24/ddg-microsoft-tracking-blocking-limit
Por qué no los dos?
Like condoms, doubling up isn’t always the best idea I heard. Increased fingerprinting.
That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, in my opinion. Fingerprinting is going to fingerprint. The whole idea of PB and things like uBlock is that it’s trying to block as much fingerprinting as possible. They won’t catch everything, but they catch a lot of it. The things they miss is just the cost of using the internet in this day and age, (unless opt for going ultra privacy mode and take even more precautions).
My point is, running two similar plugins isn’t going to suddenly make you dramatically stand out any more from fingerprints than not.
How does that compare to uBlock Origin? I noticed it blocks redirects via creepy tracking intermediaries
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Thanks. Installed.
