Mosquito9 – Tracker Blocker & Scam Warning

What it does

Blocks known trackers

It blocks known third-party trackers on the page you open. It does not block every tracker.

Cleans tracking tags from links

When a page opens, known tracking tags are removed from the address.

A warning light on every page

A green, amber or red light sums up what Mosquito9 found. It cannot catch everything.

The warning light

Green: the page looks safe.
Amber: the page is not secure (http), or has a password box on an insecure page.
Red: a known scam, phishing or lookalike site.

Mosquito9 warns about known threats and suspicious signs. It cannot catch everything.

What it looks like

Mosquito9 panel on the BBC in Chrome, with a green light and three named trackers blocked. — Chrome on the BBC. The light is green, and the panel can name trackers it blocked. That count stays on your device.

Mosquito9 panel on an insecure http page, with an amber light. — An insecure http page turns the light amber. Trackers alone do not.

Mosquito9 panel in Firefox on the BBC, with a green light and optional black and green toolbar colours. — Firefox on the BBC. The light is green. Firefox does not let the add-on count blocked trackers. The black and green toolbar colours are optional.

A BBC page opened from a link that had tracking tags, which Mosquito9 removed. — Tracking tags such as utm_source and fbclid are removed from the address before the page opens.

A full-page Mosquito9 warning for a test address that looks like PayPal. — A full-page warning when an address looks like a well-known site. This picture is a test page, not a real scam.

Privacy

There is no account and no analytics. Websites are checked on your device. Page addresses are not sent anywhere, and they are not kept as a browsing history.

About once a day, Mosquito9 downloads two public threat lists from GitHub. GitHub can see your device's IP address, as with any download. It never receives the site you are visiting.

Read the Mosquito9 privacy policy

The honest details

The tracker list is EasyPrivacy. The browser has room for 30,000 rules, so this build keeps the general tracking patterns first, then as many tracker domains as fit. About 26,000 converted rules did not fit.
Blocking applies to third-party requests. The page you opened is not blocked by the tracker list.
Tracking tags removed from the address include fbclid, gclid, msclkid, dclid, mc_eid, igshid, and a fixed list of utm_ names.
On Chrome, Edge, Brave and Opera, the panel can show how many trackers were blocked. Firefox blocks the same trackers and cleans the same links, but it does not let an add-on count or name them. The Firefox panel says blocking is on. It does not show 0 as if nothing was blocked.
Allow this site turns tracker blocking off for that site only. It does not stop link cleaning, and it does not skip the red warning.
It is not antivirus software and it is not a VPN. It does not catch every threat, and it does not tell you a page has no risk.
Safari and iPhone: not yet.

Why I built it

Every page you open is a deal you never agreed to. Before the headline has even loaded, a crowd of silent watchers has logged where you came from, what you clicked and how long you lingered. Your attention gets packaged, auctioned and sold while you are still reading.

I don't accept that. So I built a mosquito.

Mosquito9 drains the data harvesters. It cuts the invisible lines that trackers throw out, strips the tags glued onto your links, and flashes red when a site is pretending to be something it isn't. It works quietly on your own machine. It doesn't report back to me, it doesn't keep a diary of where you've been, and it never asks you to sign up for anything.

My belief is simple: your attention, your clicks and your curiosity belong to you. Privacy shouldn't be a premium feature or a setting buried five menus deep. It should be the default.

Mosquito9 won't make you invisible, and it won't catch every trick out there. Nothing can, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. What it will do is take back a little ground on every single page.

Free. Honest about what it does. Built in Yorkshire by one stubborn cyber monk.

— Anthony Holroyd, Director, Mampi Technologies Ltd