Privacy Thing

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Privacy Thing is a browser extension that shows which supported browser information a website reads, then lets you choose selected values it receives — separately for every website. Chromium and Firefox are both first-class targets.

Note

Privacy Thing is at an early stage. Supported surfaces, browser behavior and documentation may change as the project matures.

What it does

• Shows what a site checks. X-Ray reports access to supported browser surfaces, the active profile and detected problems.
• Applies rules per website. Assign profiles to exact domains or patterns, choose a fallback, add exceptions and temporarily disable protection without deleting your configuration.
• Builds coherent regional profiles. Keep geolocation, language, time zone, Date, Intl and Accept-Language aligned instead of exposing an implausible mixture.
• Reduces selected fingerprinting surfaces. Depending on the browser and profile, Privacy Thing can control or modify selected browser, screen, hardware, canvas, WebGL, audio, WebRTC, frame and worker information.
• Keeps different contexts separate. Firefox rules can additionally target containers, so the same domain can use different profiles in different contexts.
• Stays local by default. Profiles, rules and settings remain in the browser. Core features require no Privacy Thing account or backend, and the extension collects no telemetry of its own. Optional place search and map previews contact external services only after consent.

Privacy works in layers

Privacy Thing controls selected information exposed through browser APIs. It does not change your public IP address, route or encrypt traffic, or replace a VPN, proxy or Smart DNS service. Those tools can complement one another because they operate at different layers.

Privacy Thing does not guarantee anonymity or undetectability. Websites may still use IP addresses, account data, sessions and signals outside the extension's control. X-Ray reports activity only for supported surfaces; it is not a complete audit of everything a website does. See the supported scope for the current boundary.

Install

Early-stage releases are available from your browser's extension store:

• Chrome Web Store
• Firefox Add-ons
• Microsoft Edge Add-ons

From a GitHub release

1. Open Releases.
2. Download and unpack privacything-vX.Y.Z-chromium.zip or privacything-vX.Y.Z-firefox.zip.
3. Chromium: open chrome://extensions, enable Developer mode, select Load unpacked, then choose the unpacked directory.
4. Firefox: open about:debugging#/runtime/this-firefox, select Load Temporary Add-on, then choose manifest.json from the unpacked directory. Temporary add-ons are removed when Firefox restarts.

From source

Requires Node.js 24 and pnpm 11. Corepack activates the version pinned by the packageManager field in package.json.

corepack enable
pnpm install --frozen-lockfile
pnpm task build

Load build/chrome/ in Chromium or build/firefox/ in Firefox. Local builds are labelled 0.YYYY.MMDD.HHMM-local in the extension UI, using your machine's local time.

Development

The project uses Task through the repository's local binary, so no global Task installation is required.

pnpm task verify:quick   # fast local verification, including both builds
pnpm task test           # unit tests and the Chromium core E2E lane
pnpm task verify         # full local equivalent of CI
pnpm task --list-all     # every available task

Task names put the target before the variant: build:chrome:watch and test:e2e:runtime:firefox, for example.

Firefox with a persistent profile

pnpm task dev:firefox    # rebuild on change and reload the extension
pnpm task start:firefox  # launch the same profile without file watching

The binary is resolved in this order: FIREFOX_EXECUTABLE_PATH, then PT_FIREFOX_BINARY, then Playwright's firefox.executablePath(). If none resolve, the task explains how to install Playwright's Firefox binary.

Generated files

Some files are generated and must not be hand-edited:

• pnpm task generate:worker-source rebuilds the worker runtime bundle. Run it after changing packages/refract-core, or workers keep running stale logic.
• pnpm task generate:legal regenerates LICENSE.md, NOTICE.md, the commercial licensing note and bundled license texts from scripts/legal-templates/.
• pnpm generate:hardware regenerates the hardware catalogs under src/shared/.

Documentation

The public guide covers:

• getting started
• domain rules
• X-Ray diagnostics
• maps and external services
• supported scope and limitations

Contributor-facing references live next to the code:

• project structure
• code style
• contributing
• runtime invariants and agent guidance

Contributing and security

This project is not accepting contributions yet. Issues, focused reproductions and pull requests may still be opened, but external patches are not being merged until a contributor agreement is in place. Read CONTRIBUTING.md before spending time on a change.

Do not report spoofing bypasses, detection leaks or other security issues publicly. Use GitHub's private vulnerability reporting and read SECURITY.md.

License

Privacy Thing is available under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later, with additional terms. A separate commercial license may be available for uses that need different terms; see the commercial licensing note. Bundled third-party components retain their own licenses, listed in licenses/privacything/THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

The Privacy Thing name, logo and visual identity are covered separately by the branding and attribution policy.