Privacy Badger: A browser extension that learns to block invisible trackers | Hacker News Reader

Privacy Badger: A browser extension that learns to block invisible trackers

privacybadger.org

46 pointsstefankuehnel15 comments

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This is a good one too. Expands on multi-account containers:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...

alas "TC is now official unmaintened, hoping for a fork" https://github.com/stoically/temporary-containers/issues/618

Thanks for posting. Been meaning to look into this for a while, this was the prod I needed.

I see it works on Firefox on Android.

I also recommend Pihole as the other part of a two-prong approach. It's better than uBlock in this dimension: it prevents objectionable resources from even being downloaded. I have Pihole at home, but when I upgrade to an opnsense firewall I'll just rely on Unbound instead, as it also supports Steven Black's blocklist. I wouldn't particularly recommend Pihole over Unbound.

Why not Unlock Origin plus Privacy Badger for a 3 prong approach?

And I'm failing to see how Unbound replaces Pihole on an Opnsense router. I use Unbound on my Piholes in order to "leak" to TLDs rather than my ISP.

I use pihole for blocking. (if all I wanted was caching and static entries, I could use my router.)

Unbound also supports blocklists. On opnsense, you just select "Steven Black" from the Unbound drop-down and you've got the default pihole blocklist.

I don't claim they have exact feature parity! I'm happy to hear about how others are using the same tools that I use; educate me!

I use it!

Any reason why you use this instead of uBlock origin?

Any reason not to use Privacy Badger and uBlock?

Not a particular reason. But if I understand this correctly, uBlock does way more than Privacy Badger, has more blocking lists you can choose from, which all get updated very frequently, it also blocks ads, and uBlock origin is like *the* ads/tracker blocker.

I just wanted to know if there is a particular reason, why someone would use Privacy Badger. I didn't want this to sound like "you should use ublock instead of privacy badger". I was just curious, if there is something particular I haven't thought of.

uBlock is a static blocker, afaik. If a URI doesn't appear on a list currently loaded, it's not blocked. This can allow unknown and dynamic-URI trackers to follow you across many sites. Privacy Badger looks for resources that appear across several domains that behave like trackers. If it sees something that looks like a tracker more than a few times, it's blocked. I use uBlock to block the majority of ads and trackers, and I use Privacy Badger to defeat the remaining trackers and other tech aimed specifically at users with ad blockers.

yes, and... IIUC, uBlock uses heuristics, which means that potentially-objectionable content is already on your system and executing. Whereas PrivacyBadger is blocking the requests to those domains.

> yes, and... IIUC, uBlock uses heuristics, which means that potentially-objectionable content is already on your system and executing. Whereas PrivacyBadger is blocking the requests to those domains.

Not sure what you're referring to there. uBlock Origin absolutely does network blocking.

got it, thank you!

I use uBlock and Privacy Badger together.

That is my combo too. Works very well together

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