New JShelter FSF Bulletin article is online.

[Michael McMahon]

Full article: 
https://www.fsf.org/bulletin/2023/fall/jshelter-helps-protect-your-online-privacy-heres-how-to-contribute/

Magazine version: https://magazine.fsf.org/2023-fall/

Title: JShelter helps protect your online privacy: Here's how to contribute

Article:

by Michael McMahon — Published on Dec 06, 2023 12:51 PM

Did you ever ask yourself why online privacy is important and what can 
be done about it? Learn how the JShelter web extension can be part of 
your privacy protection tool kit, as well as ways to contribute, in this 
article.

Protecting your online privacy has never been more important, as 
nowadays everything we do online leaves a digital footprint. As our 
world is ever-changing, one never knows what activity permitted today 
will be banned in the future. It is a best practice, in my opinion, to 
do as much of your online research and other browsing anonymously to 
prevent problems in the future. If you do not actively protect your 
privacy, your behavior will be tracked, for example, through 
increasingly invasive advertising practices. Once collected, your data 
can be sold to law enforcement to be used against you as evidence, to 
marketers to sell you things you do not want, and to malicious actors to 
trick you based on your desires. Every step that you take to enhance 
your privacy online can go a long way to making your life more secure.

[See the photo on the site]

One step you can take is using JShelter together with thousands of 
people who do so already. What is JShelter? JShelter is a web browser 
extension used to thwart websites that try to identify users through 
their web activity, across websites whether or not they log in. Users 
who may assume their activity is anonymous on one site can be identified 
through a different site where they log in, for example, by comparing 
similarities in their browser environment. JShelter prevents web pages 
from turning the browser into a proxy to the local network. JShelter 
also blocks Web Workers, which is code running in the background of a 
browser that can be abused to install long-lived man-in-the-middle 
proxies and other attacks.

You might want to share location with certain sites during navigation. 
However, for other sites, you may want to reveal your location with less 
precision (like ordering a meal or looking for nearby places of 
interest). JShelter protects the user in other ways through features 
like JavaScript Shield, Network Boundary Shield, and Fingerprint 
Detector (known as "FPD"). The extension is free software and available 
on all major web browsers. You can find installation instructions at 
https://jshelter.org for your web browser. Discover how JShelter can 
enhance your privacy.

JShelter has gone through several changes since we last promoted it six 
months ago. Since that time, we have made improvements on usability, 
performance, and internationalization. We also recently added a way to 
identify scripts that call APIs that JShelter protects (for example, to 
create custom block lists), fixed several bugs, and improved the 
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page. Everyone stands to benefit from 
JShelter's privacy-protecting features, and journalists and activists 
would likely find the most benefit. As the number of people using 
privacy tools increases, the collective privacy from using those tools 
tends to increase as well.

You can make a difference and help make JShelter better by identifying, 
reporting, and fixing bugs. Even if it seems minor, every issue and 
workaround that you suggest might help someone else. Your reports can 
help influence the roadmap of development for the extension. Grow your 
technical skills by looking for existing issues, making your first 
contribution, and building your résumé. See our contribution page for 
ways to contribute: https://u.fsf.org/40z

Are you fluent in multiple languages? Help translate JShelter into your 
native language to help your region. Translating JShelter into more 
languages allows us to help protect the privacy of a wider audience from 
around the globe. With each additional translation, we can break down 
barriers so that people from more countries are able to take back their 
privacy. This is a crucial effort because the risks related to losing 
privacy online vary greatly by country, and sometimes have dire 
consequences. If you can read and write in multiple languages and would 
like to contribute to this project, please visit the following web page 
with information on how to get started: https://jshelter.org/i18n/

Join our passionate group by making contributions. You can make a 
difference building something great. JShelter needs your help. We are 
working to create a better world. Try it, and contribute, today!

Copyright © 2023 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This article is 
individually licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 
4.0 International license.