Steve Smith talks about the EFF's browser extension Privacy Badger, and what it does to keep your internet experience private.
Episode #8-41 released on June 3, 2018
Privacy is currently trending in a big way, especially with the new European rules put in place, we are talking about the GDPR. Because of that new law, privacy is once again in the forefront of all our minds and having extra tools to maintain our privacy is a good start.
Now, one of the ways that people get tracked online is through the use of third party trackers, that may track you across multiple web-sites. While, tracking a user’s progression through a single web-site is useful for the web-site operator, tracking your progression across the Internet can be unsettling. Which is why we are going to talk about Privacy Badger.
Privacy Badger, which is created and run by the ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION, is a piece of software that functions as a browser extension in your browser, that filters third party requests looking for trackers that may be trying to follow your behavior on the Internet. According to their explanation, the browser extension, Privacy Badger, learns by watching your traffic, and if it detects any web-site tracking you across three or more web-sites it will automatically disable that tracker’s ability to follow you online. If you look at the information in the browser extension, you will see three settings. Allow, block cookie, and block domain. For items that require functionality on pages you are visiting, but are tracking you, it will block those cookies. You may override these settings or disable Privacy Badger for that web-site.
What is Privacy Badger good for, besides preventing and mitigating third party tracking?
It functions as a single, easy to suggest, browser extension that functions in a similar way to Disconnect, Adblock Plus, Ghostery, and other similar extensions. It is based on the Adblock Plus extension, too. It can block advertisements, and other plugins just as well as other extensions, with a clean interface that even the most novice of users can understand. You can use it to block various plugins you don't want to see online by using the slider itself.
You can get this plugin in for free, at https://www.eff.org/privacybadger. The plugin is available for Google Chrome, Opera and Firefox.
Note: it may break some sites, including my own when loading images from another source. In those cases, allow the sites in question to load the pictures, or disable entirely on web-sites you do trust.
Host : Steve Smith | Music : | Editor : Steve Smith | Producer : Zed Axis Dot Net