
Show HN: A Chrome extension to detect zero-width characters - almostarockstar
https://github.com/aido179/zwBlocker
======
almostarockstar
Following on from the recent discussion [0,1] on zero-width characters and how
they might be used to fingerprint messages.

chpmrc built an extension [2] to detect these characters, but as some people
mentioned, the way the extension worked was less than ideal.

I decided to build a better version that works in the background and alerts
the user if they have selected text containing these zero-width characters,
showing a notification that allows you to copy a clean version, and a version
with zero-width characters replaced by emojis.

I also wrote a blog post about it [3].

[0] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16749422](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16749422)

[1] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16754987](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16754987)

[2] - [https://github.com/chpmrc/zero-width-chrome-
extension](https://github.com/chpmrc/zero-width-chrome-extension)

[3] - [https://medium.com/@aidobreen/hidden-text-fingerprints-
and-h...](https://medium.com/@aidobreen/hidden-text-fingerprints-and-how-to-
avoid-them-d0103edd2ce4)

