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Latest update to Privacy Badger brings a new onboarding process and other improvements

The new onboarding process will make Privacy Badger easier to use and understand. These latest changes are just some of the many improvements EFF has made to the project, with more to come! Privacy Badger was created with the objective of protecting users from third-party tracking across the web—all users. To do this, Privacy Badger needed a couple of key features:

  • The ability to catch sneaky trackers without completely breaking your browsing experience when possible.
  • Simple to use and understand.

Privacy Badger uses heuristics, meaning it observes and learns who is tracking you rather than maintaining a manual list of trackers. Even if there is a third-party tracker that is rather unknown, or new, Privacy Badger will see that tracker. If your Privacy Badger sees the tracker three times, it will block that tracker so you don’t have to wait for someone to eventually update that list. It’s also a matter of trust—Privacy Badger blocks by behavior and not by a third-party controlled list that might be sold to advertisers. Second, we try to make Privacy Badger simple and informative. Your Privacy Badger learns on its own and displays a badge showing how many trackers it has seen. If it breaks a website’s functionality, you can quickly disable Privacy Badger on that site…”

See also Not all ad blockers are the same. Here’s why the EFF’s Privacy Badger is different

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