Privacy Badger is a new tool from the Electronic Frontier Foundation designed to stop creepy online tracking.
It’s an extension for Firefox and Chrome that “automatically detects and blocks spying ads around the Web, and the invisible trackers that feed information to them.”
It is still in alpha stage, so the EFF is asking for you help to test it and report any issue that you encounter.
From the EFF article announcing Privacy Badger”
Privacy Badger is a browser-add on tool that analyzes sites to detect and disallow content that tracks you in an objectionable, non-consensual manner. When you visit websites, your copy of Privacy Badger keeps note of the “third-party” domains that embed images, scripts and advertising in the pages you visit.
If a third-party server appears to be tracking you without permission, by using uniquely identifying cookies to collect a record of the pages you visit across multiple sites, Privacy Badger will automatically disallow content from that third-party tracker. In some cases a third-party domain provides some important aspect of a page’s functionality, such as embedded maps, images, or fonts. In those cases, Privacy Badger will allow connections to the third party but will screen out its tracking cookies.
Advertisers and other third-party domains can unblock themselves in Privacy Badger by making a strong commitment to respect Do Not Track requests. By including this mechanism, Privacy Badger not only protects users who install it, but actually provides incentives for better privacy practices across the entire Web.
So users who install Privacy Badger not only get more privacy and a better browsing experience for themselves, but actually contribute to making the Web as a whole better for everyone.
You may install Privacy Badger in Firefox and Chromium using the same method you use to install any other extension. When installed and functioning, Privacy Badger has three states. Red means block the tracker. Yellow (Yellow) means that cookies or referers are not sent to the tracker. Green means the tracker is unblocked (probably because the third party does not appear to be tracking you)
Screenshot showing the three states of Privacy Badger.
