Photo: Canpoic/Flickr
In an ongoing effort to fight for internet freedom and privacy, the Electronic Frontier Foundation launched Privacy Badger, a browser plug-in that "stops advertisers and other third-party trackers from secretly tracking where you go and what pages you look at on the web."This goes beyond Adblock and some other browser plugins by disabling all ads that are tracking user behavior across multiple websites, including ones that take sneakier methods that might not be detected by other software.A big part of the importance of the extension is the distribution of user behavior to third party companies. If an ad company is tracking across multiple websites, it can give away a lot of details about a user, and make spyware and adware more insidious in the process. By eliminating the ability of certain ads and cookies to track, it can preserve user privacy on the web.This is in lock-step with the previously announced Do Not Track initiative launched early this week, which seeks a browser-based tracking standard. Third party services in compliance with the Do Not Track standards won't be blocked. If a company has its advertising blacklisted, the EFF has a method built in for the advertisers to appeal by creating a Do Not Track policy. This will take it off the Privacy Badger blacklist."It's time to put users back in control and stop surreptitious, intrusive Internet data collection," Peter Eckersley, chief computer scientist for the EFF, said in a press release. Privacy Badger can be downloaded here.