It’s time to draw the line on surveillance.
Today nearly every commercial website infects our browsers with tracking files that report our activities back to parties we may not know or trust.
So we’re providing a way to draw that line: Web Pal — a browser extension that blocks tracking and advertising*, eliminating the browser slowdowns caused by both.
Download the Web Pal here, from the Chrome Web Store
And click on the donate button to support our work.
Web Pal was developed for Customer Commons by Emmett Global, which provides privacy solutions to nonprofits. It combines Adblock Plus and Tampermonkey — two open source code bases — in one simple install that requires no additional work or maintenance. It also gives you a Customer Commons start page, which carries updates of news about surveillance and other topics of interest to Customer Commons members.
Here’s a video explaining the Web Pal:
We offer the Web Pal on Chrome. This gives you one safe browser with maximized protection, and the opportunity both to try out other protection systems on other browsers and to compare performance. Here is a list of those systems, from ProjectVRM at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society:
Abine † Do Not Track Me, DeleteMe, MaskMe PrivacyWatch: privacy-protecting browser extensions and services AdBlock Plus Ad and tracking blocking. Emmett † “An easy to install browser plugin that protects your privacy online” Collusion Firefox add-on for viewing third parties tracking your movements Disconnect.me † browser extentions to stop unwanted tracking, control data sharing Ghostery † browser extension for tracking and controlling the trackers Privacyfix † “One dashboard for your Facebook®, LinkedIn®, and Google® privacy. Blocks over 1200 trackers.” PrivacyScore † browser extensions and services to users and site builders for keeping track of trackers Privowny † – “Your personal data coach. Protect your identity/privacy. Track what the Internet knows about you.”
Note that these are maintained on a wiki and subject to change. In fact, we invite Customer Commons members to participate in ProjectVRM, and help drive development of these and other tools.
And, of course, we welcome feedback and suggestions for improving the Web Pal. And we encourage everybody to support development of all tools and services that make customers liberated, powerful and respected in the open marketplace.
* What Adblock Plus calls acceptable ads are passed through by default, but you can change it to block all ads. Just go to Chrome’s Windows menu and click down through Extensions / Emmett Web Pal / Options / Adblock Plus / Filter List. Then uncheck “Allow some non-intrusive advertising”.
