The Privacy Extension Stack

Extensions cover the long tail your browser engine allows through. A few well-chosen ones beat a dozen overlapping ones. Don’t stack redundant blockers — they conflict and slow pages.

Extension	Blocks tracker requests	Hides page elements	Answers consent banners	Strips tracking parameters	Limits cookie lifetime
uBlock Origin the one that matters	● Yes	● Yes	○ No	◐ Partly	○ No
Privacy Badger learns by behavior, not lists	● Yes	○ No	○ No	○ No	○ No
Consent-O-Matic Aarhus University	○ No	◐ Partly	● Yes	○ No	○ No
ClearURLs utm_*, fbclid, gclid	○ No	○ No	○ No	● Yes	○ No
Cookie AutoDelete clears on tab close	○ No	○ No	○ No	○ No	● Yes

●Yes○No◐Partly

The reason “just install uBlock Origin” is good advice but not complete advice: it owns the first two columns and nothing else. Consent answering, URL cleaning, and cookie expiry are separate problems that a content blocker does not solve, which is why the recommended stack is four tools and not one — or twelve.

Source webtracking.org analysis of the documented behavior of each extension Judged on default configuration. Overlapping blockers are excluded deliberately: running two content blockers causes conflicts without adding coverage.

uBlock Origin — the one that matters

uBlock Origin is the most effective content blocker: it blocks ads, trackers, and malicious domains using community filter lists, with low memory use. Install it first; for most people it’s 90% of the protection.

The catch is Manifest V3. On Chrome, full uBlock Origin no longer works — you must use uBlock Origin Lite, which uses Chrome’s declarative blocking and is noticeably less capable (no dynamic filtering, weaker cosmetic filtering). On Firefox, full uBlock Origin still works completely. On Brave, native Shields cover most of this and uBO is optional. This is the clearest practical reason to prefer Firefox or Brave for blocking.

Browser	Full uBlock Origin runs	Dynamic filtering	Full cosmetic filtering	Per-site rules
Firefox full uBlock Origin	● Yes	● Yes	● Yes	● Yes
Brave native Shields; uBO optional	◐ Partly	◐ Partly	● Yes	● Yes
Chrome uBlock Origin Lite only	○ No	○ No	◐ Partly	◐ Partly
Edge same Manifest V3 constraints	○ No	○ No	◐ Partly	◐ Partly
Safari content-blocker API, different model	○ No	○ No	◐ Partly	◐ Partly

●Yes◐Partly○No

The capability gap is not a matter of degree — dynamic filtering and per-site rules are how you fix a page a blocker breaks, and on Chrome they are simply gone. Note who made the change: the extension API that constrains blocking on Chrome is set by the company whose revenue is advertising. Firefox is the only major browser where the full extension still runs.

Source uBlock Origin and uBlock Origin Lite documentation, and the Chrome extensions Manifest V3 platform rules Compares the best blocker available on each browser out of the box. Brave achieves its coverage natively rather than through an extension.

Complements (pick what fits)

• Privacy Badger (EFF) — learns and blocks trackers by behavior rather than from a list, catching trackers no filter list knows yet. Pairs well with uBlock Origin.
• Consent-O-Matic (Aarhus University) — automatically answers cookie-consent banners with your preferences (reject non-essential), so you stop clicking “Reject all” all day. “I still don’t care about cookies” is a lighter alternative that mostly just hides banners.
• ClearURLs — strips tracking parameters (utm_*, fbclid, gclid, and many more) from links and redirects, reducing click-level tracking.
• Cookie AutoDelete — deletes cookies from tabs when you close them, except for sites you allowlist. Aggressive but effective for limiting persistence.

What to skip

Avoid “all-in-one privacy” extensions from unknown vendors, VPN-browser-extension bundles, and anything that asks to “read and change all your data” without a clear, audited reason — a malicious or careless privacy extension sees everything you do. Stick to the well-known, ideally open-source options above. More extensions is not more privacy; the right four are plenty.