Reviews for Privacy Possum
Privacy Possum by cowlicks
Review by Firefox user 14211116
Rated 4 out of 5
by Firefox user 14211116, 8 years agoThe add-on is good, accomplishes the essential as privacy.
The only inconvenience that it does not protect me from the fingerprint tracking.
I did two online tests(Am I unique?, Panopticlick EFF) with the extension enabled, and in both of them my test result was positive.
The only inconvenience that it does not protect me from the fingerprint tracking.
I did two online tests(Am I unique?, Panopticlick EFF) with the extension enabled, and in both of them my test result was positive.
Developer response
posted 8 years agoTL;DR Panopticlick and Am I Unique use a homerolled assortment of tracking code that is impractical for commercial tracking.
I'll go into a little detail about Panopticlick to explain more. Panopticlick uses a deployment of the open source fingerprinting tool Fingerprintjs2, along with their own unique fingerprinting code.
I added some debug code and visited Panopticlick I see Privacy Possum detects the page accessing 12 API's that are marked for watching for fingerprinting. Except this is split over 3 different scripts:
https://panopticlick.eff.org/static/fp2.js
https://panopticlick.eff.org/static/fetch_whorls.js
https://panopticlick.eff.org/static/deployJava.js
Privacy watches for fingerprinting on *per script basis*, this is a reasonable assumption because, normally a websites tracking code is bundled into one place, so that the tracking info can be easily aggregated and used. I'm not aware of a real deployment where tracking is split up like this. It is practical for panopticlick (and Am I Unique) because they want to present information about your tracking independently, and manage the code to do that in a more practical way.
For a demonstration of the fingerprinting detection code, I usually point folks to:
http://valve.github.io/fingerprintjs2/
I think it is worth considering cases like Panopticlick, or Am I Unique, because they can be used to evade PP's novel detection. But I have not seen a case like this in the wild.
I'll go into a little detail about Panopticlick to explain more. Panopticlick uses a deployment of the open source fingerprinting tool Fingerprintjs2, along with their own unique fingerprinting code.
I added some debug code and visited Panopticlick I see Privacy Possum detects the page accessing 12 API's that are marked for watching for fingerprinting. Except this is split over 3 different scripts:
https://panopticlick.eff.org/static/fp2.js
https://panopticlick.eff.org/static/fetch_whorls.js
https://panopticlick.eff.org/static/deployJava.js
Privacy watches for fingerprinting on *per script basis*, this is a reasonable assumption because, normally a websites tracking code is bundled into one place, so that the tracking info can be easily aggregated and used. I'm not aware of a real deployment where tracking is split up like this. It is practical for panopticlick (and Am I Unique) because they want to present information about your tracking independently, and manage the code to do that in a more practical way.
For a demonstration of the fingerprinting detection code, I usually point folks to:
http://valve.github.io/fingerprintjs2/
I think it is worth considering cases like Panopticlick, or Am I Unique, because they can be used to evade PP's novel detection. But I have not seen a case like this in the wild.
421 reviews
- Rated 3 out of 5by jay, 2 months agoGood Plugin but can't login into few site when it is enabled like artstation, linkedin, Epic games etc
- Rated 3 out of 5by Firefox user 14497672, 4 months agoIt breaks login on some sites but i guess it's a good thing to have
- Rated 1 out of 5by streinen, 5 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Arman Daneshjoo, 6 months ago
- Rated 1 out of 5by Firefox user 5905964, 6 months agoMalware. Timezone monkeying (nonsense values) makes you very, very unique and very, very easy to track! Says privacy on the tin, but achieves the opposite.
- Rated 3 out of 5by Firefox user 16480293, 9 months agoAppears to be interfering with some websites' login procedures. Trying to login to artstation with this enabled results in an infinite loading screen.
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 19026513, 10 months ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 15514956, a year ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 18903740, a year ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Juan García, a year ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by LiaaWho?, a year agoI was trying to find an extension that I pair with other privacy focused extension then I found this, although I didn't find it on Android add-on but at least I can add this to mine i thought it'll crash my browser but it's not instead it work like normal which is what I'm not expected and yes I love how this extension work.
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 18619481, a year ago
- Rated 2 out of 5by Firefox user 17879311, a year agoUsed to be ground breaking, but it has not been updated since Jul 18, 2019. Now it seems to break a lot of sites. I wish it had a better interface so we could toggle global settings of what we wanted enabled and disabled. It seems with a lot of the new privacy laws, browsers are starting to build these features in.
- Rated 5 out of 5by ONEEX, a year ago
- Rated 3 out of 5by Padua, a year agoGood extension, but breaks panning on Google Maps. Would be nice if this extension gets an update, with a fix.
- Rated 5 out of 5by Claire, 2 years ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Hsmalley54, 2 years ago
- Rated 3 out of 5by Live_Hater, 2 years agoБлокирует загрузку видеопотока в плеере newplayjj, а этот плеер используют многие видеохостинги имейте ввиду.
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 14998089, 2 years ago
- Rated 5 out of 5by Firefox user 18221463, 2 years ago