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EFF's browser extension that blocks spying ads officially launches

After more than a year of testing, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is releasing Privacy Badger 1.0, a browser extension for Chrome and Firefox that prevents ads and sites from tracking your activity on the web. The EFF says over a 250,000 users have used the early versions of the extension, following a call for testers last May. So how does it work? Privacy Badger blocks so-called super cookies and browser fingerprinting, both of which can be used to track your browsing habits across multiple sites. It works together with the Do Not Track setting in browsers, which also allows you to opt out of ad tracking, but requires services to honor that setting. Together, they should both offer some peace of mind if you're worried about increasingly powerful web ads, but don't want to stop ads entirely with services like AdBlock.