| Hello all! Recent creator of a similar tool that has been getting a lot of buzz, I am here to throw some constructive thoughts out there! These ideas are useless from a technical level (for all the reasons that have been mentioned already.) Where they are useful is at a social level. People are energized and ready to fight. Many of them didn't know about this issue. Many of them didn't know that there are things they can do as individuals to fight back. Your tool (and mine) are getting attention because they open eyes and tap into pain. As useless as noise might be, people understand the idea and that makes it accessible. That means people will try it, get it, and share it. We need to leverage that attention in order to teach those people things they need to understand about privacy. Our tools should be seen as a gateway into impactful approaches like Tor, VPN, HTTPS Everywhere, Privacy Badger, and the EFF at large. Tooting my own horn: that's what I've been doing with https://slifty.github.io/internet_noise/index.html In all interviews I make sure to explain that while this is an amusing form or protest, it is not effective and people who care need to go take the steps outlined on the project page. A website can do this. A chrome plugin, however, risks being harmful with minimal benefit. It minimizes the potential for communication to your audience, it is also harder to access which means you are touching a more narrow audience. Here's the good news! The project I linked to is open source -- https://github.com/slifty/internet_noise/ -- you could contribute to it directly and then update your plugin so that instead of generating noise and hijacking their browser information you just direct them to the website version of the concept. |