Frequently asked questions

Why was Privacy Thing created?

Fingerprinting mechanisms are often embedded in a website's own code and third-party dependencies. Blocking every attempt is not always practical and can break the site, so Privacy Thing does not promise to stop fingerprinting completely.

Instead, it changes the browser data and functions it supports. Where possible, it intentionally supplies false values that form a statistically plausible and internally consistent fingerprint.

Privacy Thing uses public datasets and catalogs to make generated values less arbitrary:

• Valve's Steam Hardware & Software Survey provides weighted distributions for display resolutions, CPU core counts, and memory.
• ChromiumDash provides real Chrome versions for each desktop platform.
• Mozilla and Chromium locale catalogs define language and locale values supported by those browsers.
• OpenStreetMap's country-language catalog helps select suitable language defaults for a region.
• tz-lookup maps coordinates to IANA time zones.

These sources help avoid obviously impossible combinations. They do not make a browser indistinguishable from every other browser or guarantee anonymity. See What Privacy Thing covers and Product limitations.

Does Privacy Thing hide my IP address or replace a VPN?

No. Privacy Thing does not change your public IP address or route your traffic.

Where are settings stored?

Regional Presets, rules, and settings stay in extension storage. Read Where Privacy Thing stores data for details.

What does X-Ray show?

X-Ray records detected use of supported browser data and functions in the current tab. It does not show all network traffic or every action performed by a site.

Can different sites use different settings?

Yes. Domain Rules can assign different Regional Presets and protection settings to different hosts or domain patterns.

We love Firefox Containers. They are a fantastic concept for keeping different parts of your browsing separate, and Privacy Thing supports them directly. Each container can have its own protection settings and an optional Regional Preset. Read Firefox Containers for details.

Which browsers are supported?

The public Preview is available in the Chrome, Firefox, and Edge extension stores. The Chromium version should also work in other Chromium-based desktop browsers that support Manifest V3, although those browsers are not part of the same release and testing matrix.

Category coverage differs between the Chromium and Firefox versions. See the browser data and functions table.

Why does the map require separate consent?

Place search sends text to Nominatim. Map previews request tiles and fonts from OpenFreeMap.

Privacy Thing makes these connections only after you grant consent.