Privacy Possum for Chrome and Firefox blocks common commercial tracking methods

Today, we are talking about another browser plugin that can prevent you from being tracked across the internet. It is easy to figure out if you are being tracked if you see similar advertisements no matter where you are on the internet, especially based on the search you made on Google or any other search engines.

This plugin is called as Privacy Possum which in its own term “wrenches common commercial tracking methods by reducing and falsifying the data gathered by tracking“.

Privacy Possum for Firefox & Chrome

Privacy Possum works in three major ways:

• It blocks cookies that let trackers uniquely identify you across websites
• It will also block refer headers that reveal your browsing location
• The most annoying is the etag. It blocks etag tracking which leverages browser caching to uniquely identify you
• The best part is it can block browser fingerprinting which tracks the inherent uniqueness of your browser.

How does Privacy Possum block tracking

• Cookie tracking: Most online tracking happens through cookies. Privacy Possum blocks all 3rd party cookies.
• etag tracking: These are well-known tracking vector, commonly used instead of cookies. It stores etags when you visit a website for the first time, and then tries to figure out if these tags are again used anywhere. It then adds the new tags as well along with old ones. So next time those tags show up, it simply blocks them.

Extensions for Firefox and Chrome

I loved the extension’s simplicity. There are absolutely no settings or stats you need to see. It just tells you the number of trackers blocked, source count, and so on. You can turn it off anytime you want. You can download the extensions for Chrome and Firefox.

Overall, it’s a great way to block all tracking from all third-party advertisers which haunt you around the globe. Though I do miss the option of details that Privacy Badger has to offer for transparency.

Privacy Possum vs. Privacy Badger, which is better?

Only a few days ago, we talked about Privacy Badger. It almost does the same thing, but the developer of Privacy Possum claims that adding new privacy protections was difficult, or impossible with the current architecture of Privacy Badger. While using Privacy Badger’s fingerprinting, blocking the origin CDN URL is marked as tracking (not the URL). So everything from that origin is blocked in a 3rd party context. This is bad because CDN is common, and trackers find their way around.