A developer named Christopher Soghoian at Harvard University created an add-on for web browsers that will prevent advertisers from being able to monitor a user’s web surfing activities. This includes the various searches that a browser on the web might conduct and even the sites that they might visit. For those who might be worried about their privacy on the internet, this new web extension could prove to be very useful.

The add-on has been named TACO, or Targeted Advertising Cookie Opt Out. Anyone that installs this extension will be able to prevent 27 companies who engage in behavioral targeting from monitoring their web usage. Although this is certainly a start, there are plenty more web advertisers that could still be targeting your web usage.

TACO was created by altering a Google web extension which was possible because of an open source license. The extension works by creating a permanent cookie that allows the web user to opt out of the behavioral tracking programs. This includes Google’s new behaviorally based web advertising program as well. Even if your cookies are cleared, the cookies added by TACO will remain.

Soghoian, who created the browser extension, said that this was only a temporary solution for a much bigger problem. He suggested that all behavioral web advertisers should adopt a universal cookie which would allow a person to opt out of their programs instead of having an opt out cookie for each different advertiser. Soghoian also said that coming up with an agreeable solution by all web advertisers would be a difficult task.