On privacy

[under construction: there is so much to cover..]

Hyperlink auditing

I became aware about "hyperlink-auditing" after reading this post.

Reference: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/links.html#hyperlink-auditing.

I have observed that hyperlink-auditing pings are reported as requests of type other, in the behind-the-scene matrix. Be aware that HTTPSB ships with the behind-the-scene matrix- and ABP-filtering disabled in order to not break browser's auto-update features and to not interfere with other extensions.

Thus, privacy-conscious users will have to go to their behind-the-scene matrix and blacklist the other column in order to foil privacy-invading hyperlink-auditing.

You can access the behind-the-scene matrix by opening HTTPSB's dashboard: clicking the extension icon while in the dashboard will open the behind-the-scene matrix, from where matrix- and ABP-filtering can be turned on.

Note: I verified that disabling the chrome://flags/#disable-hyperlink-auditing flag does not disable hyperlink-auditing. Do not rely on this setting.