I was looking through my news page the other day and saw a story that caught my interest from the tech site XDA.

I like browser extensions, they are often interfaces to useful apps and services I use like 1Password or Raindrop, or they can add functionality like scrobbling my music from YouTube Music to last.fm. or any number of helpful things.

I wondered to myself – which 3 did he keep, so I clicked through, only to see this.

Uh-oh. I guess they caught me. Or did they?

I use the Arc browser and while it used to bundle in an ad blocker it doesn’t any longer. The only thing I use related to advertising and tracking is something called Privacy Badger, which is made by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that fights for your rights online. It isn’t a traditional ad blocker.

From their web site:

Privacy Badger differs from traditional ad-blocking extensions in two key ways. First, while most other blocking extensions prioritize blocking ads, Privacy Badger doesn’t block ads unless they happen to be tracking you; in fact, one of our goals is to incentivize advertisers to adopt better privacy practices.

Second, most other blockers rely on a human-curated list of domains or URLs to block. Privacy Badger is an algorithmic tracker blocker – we define what “tracking” looks like, and then Privacy Badger blocks or restricts domains that it observes tracking in the wild. What is and isn’t considered a tracker is entirely based on how a specific domain acts, not on human judgment.

Essentially, if the site isn’t doing anything odd or oogy relating to tracking me, the ads will display, otherwise they get blocked.

I clicked the x to dismiss their messaging and read the article.

Interestingly, ironically, and hilariously, the 1st of the 3 extensions that he writes about is uBlock Origin ad, tracker, and pop-up blocker. The writer calls it essential and a must-have, saying it works great for blocking ads…. just about everywhere.

It got me thinking – I wonder if he disables it on XDA when he looks at his own or his colleague’s posts.

I thought I would check to see just what XDA was tracking about me:

41 Potential Trackers

Here is the list:

Privacy Badger (privacybadger.org) is a browser extension that automatically learns to block hidden trackers.

Privacy Badger blocked 41 potential trackers on http://www.xda-developers.com: