Sunday, July 20, 2014: 6:00 pm (Manning): This talk will introduce the design and implementation of Privacy Badger, EFF's new browser extension that automatically blocks both invisible trackers and spying ads. It is intended to be a minimal- or zero-configuration option that most Internet users can use to prevent nonconsensual third party collection of their reading habits from their everyday browser. Privacy Badger couples the recently developed HTTP Do Not Track opt-out header with a number of heuristics for classifying the behavior of third parties to automatically determine which should be blocked, which are needed but should have cookies blocked, and which are safe from a privacy perspective. Peter will also talk about the bigger picture on the role that nonconsensual commercial surveillance has come to play in the business and technical infrastructure of the Web; and what we can do to build better alternatives.

Peter Eckersley