Privacy Pass
Shares rank 27 of 70 browser extensions by recommenders
Recommended for passing human checks across sites without cross-site tracking; critics say the extension often just shows challenge pages and its privacy claims are unproven.
Recommended for passing human checks across sites without cross-site tracking; critics say the extension often just shows challenge pages and its privacy claims are unproven.
20 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 13
- criticize it
- 7
- approval share
- 65%
Recommended in 9 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 13 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 9 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Proves humanness without cross-site tracking
“lets you use the "humanness" token across different websites without them being able to use it as a tracking signal”
Comment from 18 Nov 2025 in “Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues” “cryptographic tokens that you can use for searches without them being linked to your account”
Comment from 4 Jun 2026 in “Show HN: Uruky (EU-based Kagi alternative) now has Image Search and URL Rewrites” Zero-knowledge approach praised as interesting
“People, you have to read about zero knowledge proofs. Look at e.g. Privacy Pass.”
Comment from 10 May 2026 in “Google Broke reCAPTCHA for De-Googled Android Users” “Look at Privacy Pass, it's interesting!”
Comment from 8 May 2026 in “Kids bypass age verification with fake moustaches” Seen as a better privacy option
“the more private options we have (with different levels of privacy), the better”
Comment from 22 Aug 2026 in “Kagi added a setting for removing paywalled links from search results” “there are technologies that don't have this issue, eg. privacy pass”
Comment from 7 Sep 2026 in “It took a year to ship WebAssembly in Anubis” “this seems like a good solution”
Comment from 17 Mar 2026 in “Kagi Small Web”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Extension mostly just redirects to challenges
“The only thing the browser extension does for me is redirect me to an “Interactive challenge“ page”
Comment from 5 Nov 2025 in “Ask HN: Help me pass Cloudflare Turnstile on my phone?” “their extension implementing it seems to do absolutely nothing”
Comment from 27 Dec 2025 in “Cloudflare Is Ruining the Internet” Privacy claims doubted
“Having Privacy in the name doesn't mean it's actually privacy preserving.”
Comment from 11 May 2026 in “Google Broke reCAPTCHA for De-Googled Android Users” “I see no trust path other than “us, bro”.”
Comment from 25 May 2026 in “Search engines alternatives now that Google isn't Google anymore” Still requires authentication like ID checks
“This sounds just as bad as having to use a digital ID, age verification, etc...”
Comment from 22 Jun 2026 in “Cloudflare, Chrome, Firefox Developing Next-Gen Privacy Pass: PACTs” “every time there is a captcha it makes you authenticate”
Comment from 30 Apr 2026 in “I accidentally made law enforcement shut down their fake honeypot” Reported broken and possibly unmaintained
“looks like even Cloudflare's Silk Privacy Pass with challenge tokens is broken”
Comment from 18 Nov 2025 in “Cloudflare Global Network experiencing issues” “seems kind of dead (a dependabot zombie)”
Comment from 24 Jun 2026 in “We're making Bunny DNS free: because a faster internet won't build itself”
Other browser extensions people recommend
The four most recommended other browser extensions, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SponsorBlock | 137 | 4 | 97% | 13 | — | Approved |
| Firefox Multi-Account Containers | 76 | 13 | 85% | 10 | 7.5 yrs3 owners | Approved |
| NoScript | 61 | 11 | 85% | 12 | 10 yrs4 owners | Approved |
| Claude in Chrome | 53 | 42 | 56% | 9 | — | — |
| Privacy PassThis page | 13 | 7 | 65% | 9 | — | — |
What people said
23 of the 25 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“there are technologies that don't have this issue, eg. privacy pass”
“the more private options we have (with different levels of privacy), the better”
“Wasn't Privacy Pass supposed to fix this?”
“seems kind of dead (a dependabot zombie)”
“This sounds just as bad as having to use a digital ID, age verification, etc...”
“separates the roles in the age-verification question”
“cryptographic tokens that you can use for searches without them being linked to your account”
“I see no trust path other than “us, bro”.”
“Can you precisely describe an attack that defeats it, or are you just throwing names you've heard”
“Having Privacy in the name doesn't mean it's actually privacy preserving.”
“there is a goddamn RFC for it”
“People, you have to read about zero knowledge proofs. Look at e.g. Privacy Pass.”
“Look at Privacy Pass, it's interesting!”
“every time there is a captcha it makes you authenticate”
“marketed somewhat like Kagi Privacy Pass”
“this seems like a good solution”
“You can use the privacy pass [0] browser extension to skip them.”
“their extension implementing it seems to do absolutely nothing”
“just in case the government and SickBooze.com can exchange info”
“lets you use the "humanness" token across different websites without them being able to use it as a tracking signal”
“looks like even Cloudflare's Silk Privacy Pass with challenge tokens is broken”
“The only thing the browser extension does for me is redirect me to an “Interactive challenge“ page”
“This may be crapshoot but have you tried PrivacyPass browser extension?”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.