Privacy Badger was created to protect users from pervasive non-consensual tracking, and to do so automatically, without relying on human-edited lists of known trackers. While our goals remain the same, our approach is changing. It is time for Privacy Badger to evolve.
Thanks to disclosures from Google Security Team, we are changing the way Privacy Badger works by default in order to protect you better. Privacy Badger used to learn about trackers as you browsed the Web. Now, we are turning “local learning” off by default, as it may make you more identifiable to websites or other actors. If you wish, you can still choose to opt in to local learning and have the exact same Badger experience as before. Regardless, all users will continue to benefit from Privacy Badger’s up-to-date knowledge of trackers in the wild, as well as its other privacy-preserving features like outgoing link protection and widget replacement.
Google Security Team reached out to us in February with a set of security disclosures related to Privacy Badger’s local learning function. The first was a serious security issue; we removed the relevant feature immediately. The team also alerted us to a class of attacks that were enabled by Privacy Badger’s learning. Essentially, since Privacy Badger adapts its behavior based on the way that sites you visit behave, a dedicated attacker could manipulate t ..
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