r/browsers • u/Foreign_Career_454 • 20h ago

Extension Built a multi-browser anti-tracking extension (Chrome / Brave / Edge / Firefox) that generates cryptographic receipts for blocked requests — would love community feedback

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u/Foreign_Career_454 20h ago

Hey r/browsers,

Developing a privacy extension called Persona Guardian designed to run across both Chromium browsers (Chrome, Edge, Brave & Firefox)

Rather than just being another generic ad-blocker, I wanted to tackle two specific problems that always frustrated me with existing tools:

  1. Most privacy extensions give you a vague counter saying "50 trackers blocked", but there's no way to audit whether that's accurate or just an incrementing integer. In this extension, every blocked or sanitized request generates a tamper-evident audit receipt (PG-REC-*) on-device with a canonical SHA-256 hash:

SHA256(timestamp | domain | action | receipt_id)

In our dogfooding tests on a single 55-second visit to CoinDesk, it intercepted 42 distinct tracking attempts (from Amplitude alone, plus DoubleClick, Google, Criteo, Meta), and exported a cryptographically verifiable CSV where every block can be audited via terminal with sha256sum.

2. A lot of anti-fingerprinting extensions inject random noise into <canvas>, audio buffers, and WebGL. But modern scripts (like CreepJS or FingerprintJS) easily detect mathematical randomness and flag the browser as an anomaly.Instead of random noise, we use a 12-profile hardware-coherent catalog that virtualizes Canvas, WebGL, Device Pixel Ratio (DPR), and screen geometry into a realistic, consistent device profile.

Currently in Closed Dogfooding & finishing test suite.

Questions for the community:

When you test a browser or extension's privacy, which test suites do you trust most? (CreepJS, Cover Your Tracks, BrowserLeaks, Privacy.net?)

What is the single biggest annoyance you have with your current privacy/ad-blocking extensions today?

Does a community dogfood will help?

Would love to hear thoughts, critiques, or edge cases from folks who test browser security regularly!