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.

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.

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.