New Update Privacy Badger updates

Lenny_Fox

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Yes , partly, but there are three way of setting them and are mostly implemented as first party by websites tracking unique visitors without using Google services for this.

So generic detection of privacy badger seems a better mechanism
 

oldschool

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Thanks they restored the pixel tracking cookie detection again, good news. That is a reason to add it again.
I believe I'd now recommend using Privacy Badger to anyone who uses a browser's built-in adblocker and wants a simple, user-friendly setup. It's not a "must have" exension but it will catch some junk that gets by the adblocker. It's also updated regularly and is backed by a reputable organization - EFF.

My 2 cents.
 

ErzCrz

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I believe I'd now recommend using Privacy Badger to anyone who uses a browser's built-in adblocker and wants a simple, user-friendly setup. It's not a "must have" exension but it will catch some junk that gets by the adblocker. It's also updated regularly and is backed by a reputable organization - EFF.

My 2 cents.

It's also on the Chromium Edge store now. I have been experimenting with it but UBO configuration already blocks what PB blocks with it's lists so undecided if it's an unnecessary overlap in my cirumstances. As you've said though, it's more for those using Brave or Opera etc with built-in adblockers that aren't quite up to the job.
 

oldschool

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New version released.

Full changeset: release-2020.7.21...release-2020.8.25
  • Added a button to widget replacements to always allow a widget on a site
  • Improved scrolling of tracking domains on the options page
  • Fixed various site breakages
  • Improved translations (Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Esperanto, Finnish, French, Polish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish)
 

oldschool

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Privacy Badger 2020.10.7
@ghostwords ghostwords released this 5 days ago · 1 commit to master since this release
Highlights:
  • Disabled learning (by default) to address privacy concerns. Visit Privacy Badger Is Changing to Protect You Better to learn more.
  • Added support for Global Privacy Control, a new specification that lets you tell companies you'd like to opt out of data sharing and selling
  • Added a new section to the options page to display the browser settings that Privacy Badger overrides for privacy reasons
  • Fixed various site breakages
  • Improved translations (Simplified Chinese, Dutch, Finnish, Hebrew, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian)
Full changeset: release-2020.8.25...release-2020.10.7

 

oldschool

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Privacy Badger update: v. 2020.12.10
  • Added a direct link to widget content to replacements for widgets like YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud and Spotify. You can click this link to watch a video (for example) without sharing the page you are on with the video provider. You can also right-click the link to copy the link URL.
  • Fixed "fbclid" tracking parameter removal on Facebook
  • Enabled Google Search link unwrapping on Firefox for Android
  • Fixed various site breakages
  • Improved translations (Dutch, Esperanto, French, German, Hebrew, Polish, Russian, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian)
Full changeset: release-2020.10.7...release-2020.12.10
 

oldschool

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Privacy Badger latest
Privacy Badger 2021.8.11
@ghostwords ghostwords released this 6 days ago · 3 commits to master since this release
Highlights:
  • Improved buttons in the popup: Disable and Report are larger and use less text, Donate is now a link
  • Removed "Prevent WebRTC from leaking local IP address" from the options page. If you previously enabled this setting, it remains available for now. However, the setting is now deprecated and will be removed in a future update. To learn more, visit #2782.
  • Improved dark theme in Chrome
  • Fixed various site breakages
  • Improved translations (Simplified Chinese, Esperanto, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Polish, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian)
Full changeset: release-2021.6.8...release-2021.8.11
 

oldschool

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Privacy Badger 2021.11.23.1

Latest
  • Improved widget replacement system to better handle Google reCAPTCHA. Privacy Badger replaces potentially useful widgets with placeholders. These replacements protect privacy while letting you restore the original widget whenever you want it or need it for the page to function.
  • Improved tracking script surrogation system to work across more websites. Script surrogates protect privacy while avoiding site breakages.
  • Fixed display of non-tracking domains
  • Added more widget replacement placeholders and fixed various site breakages
  • Improved translations (Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Persian, Brazilian Portuguese, European Portuguese, Swedish)
Full changeset: release-2021.8.17...release-2021.11.23.1
 

oldschool

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Highlights:

  • Improved widget replacement system to better handle embedded YouTube videos
  • Delayed opening the new user welcome page for a few seconds to work around a Chromium bug with administrator settings (managed storage)
  • Removed obsolete "Prevent WebRTC from leaking local IP address" setting
  • Fixed various site breakages
  • Added Japanese translations
  • Improved translations (Dutch, Finnish, French, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian)
 

oldschool

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Privacy Badger 2023.1.31 release notes:
Added a note to the popup to explain that if you would like to log into websites with your Google account, you need to fully allow accounts.google.com
Added dark theme support to widget replacement placeholders
Fixed blocking service worker-initiated requests in Chrome
Fixed various site breakages
Added Hindi translations
Improved Traditional Chinese translations
Full changeset: release-2022.9.27...release-2023.1.31
 

oldschool

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Privacy Badger 2023-5-10
Highlights:
  • Expanded protection for "cookieblocked" (slider set to yellow) domains. These domains are allowed to load without access to cookies, as a compromise to avoid breaking websites. However, sometimes the same domain is used to serve both unobjectionable content as well as obnoxious fingerprinters that do not need cookies to track your browsing. Privacy Badger will now fully block these fingerprinters.
  • Disabled Google's Topics API by default. The Topics API replaces Federated Learning of Cohorts (FLoC).
  • You can now see where Privacy Badger observed tracking by a given domain by clicking on the domain name in the list of tracking domains on the options page
  • Fixed various site breakages
  • Added Vietnamese translations
  • Improved translations (Finnish, French, Hebrew, Persian, European Portuguese, Russian, Spanish)
Full changeset: release-2023.1.31...release-2023.5.10
 

oldschool

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Release Privacy Badger 2023.9.12 · EFForg/privacybadger
Highlights:

Improved link tracking protection ("link unwrapping") on Google sites. 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 for links added after scrolling through Google Search results.
Fixed various site breakages
Added Malay and restored Serbian translations
Improved Traditional Chinese translations

Full changeset: release-2023.6.23...release-2023.9.12
 

oldschool

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We released a new version of Privacy Badger that updates how we fight “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 creepy surveillance tactic that allows a company to follow you whenever you click on a link to leave its website. As we wrote in our original announcement of Google link tracking protection, Google uses different techniques in different browsers. The techniques also vary across Google products. One common link tracking approach surreptitiously redirects the outgoing request through the tracker’s own servers. There is virtually no benefit 1 for you when this happens. The added complexity mostly just helps Google learn more about your browsing.


It's been a few years since our original release of Google link tracking protection. Things have changed in the meantime. For example, Google Search now dynamically adds results as you scroll the page ("infinite scroll" has mostly replaced distinct pages of results). Google Hangouts no longer exists! This made it a good time for us to update Privacy Badger’s first party tracking protections.




Privacy Badger’s extension popup window showing that link tracking protection is active for the currently visited site.

You can always check to see what Privacy Badger has done on the site you’re currently on by clicking on Privacy Badger’s icon in your browser toolbar. Whenever link tracking protection is active, you will see that reflected in Privacy Badger’s popup window.



We'll get into the technical explanation about how this all works below, but the TL;DR is that this is just one way that Privacy Badger continues to create a less tracking- and tracker-riddled internet experience.


More Details​


This update is an overhaul of how Google link tracking removal works. Trying to get it all done inside a “content script” (a script we inject into Google pages) was becoming increasingly untenable. Privacy Badger wasn’t catching all cases of tracking and was breaking page functionality. Patching to catch the missed tracking with the content script was becoming unreasonably complex and likely to break more functionality.


Going forward, Privacy Badger will still attempt to replace tracking URLs on pages with the content script, but will no longer try to prevent links from triggering tracking beacon requests. Instead, it will block all such requests in the network layer.


Often the link destination is replaced with a redirect URL in response to interaction with the link. Sometimes Privacy Badger catches this mutation in the content script and fixes the link in time. Sometimes the page uses a more complicated approach to covertly open a redirect URL at the last moment, which isn’t caught in the content script. Privacy Badger works around these cases by redirecting the redirect to where you actually want to go in the network layer.


Google’s Manifest V3 (MV3) removes the ability to redirect requests using the flexible webRequest API that Privacy Badger uses now. MV3 replaces blocking webRequest with the limited by design Declarative Net Request (DNR) API. Unfortunately, this means that MV3 extensions are not able to properly fix redirects at the network layer at this time. We would like to see this important functionality gap resolved before MV3 becomes mandatory for all extensions.


Privacy Badger still attempts to remove tracking URLs with the content script so that you can always see and copy to clipboard the links you actually want, as opposed to mangled links you don’t. For example, without this feature, you may expect to copy “https://example.com”, but you will instead get something like “https://www.google.com/url?q=https://example.com/&sa=D&source=editors&ust=1692976254645783&usg=AOvVaw1LT4QOoXXIaYDB0ntz57cf”.


To learn more about this update, and to see a breakdown of the different kinds of Google link tracking, visit the pull request on GitHub.


Let us know if you have any feedback through email, or, if you have a GitHub account, through our GitHub issue tracker.


To install Privacy Badger, visit privacybadger.org. Thank you for using Privacy Badger!
 

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