FB Stealth

Plain JavaScript Chrome Manifest V3 extension for best-effort Facebook and Messenger privacy controls.

Features

• Best-effort blocking for seen/read receipts in Messenger chats.
• Optional experimental best-effort Facebook story seen blocking.
• Best-effort blocking for typing indicators.
• Per-tab quick pause.
• Privacy-safe protection stats for Messenger seen, story seen, and typing.
• Optional debug mode with sanitized console diagnostics.

Changing the seen/read-receipt setting reloads Facebook automatically so Facebook rebuilds its in-memory thread state. Typing changes apply without a reload.

Facebook story seen blocking is separate from Messenger seen blocking. It blocks exact Story seen-state operations through GraphQL and worker commands while leaving broad worker traffic alone. Leave it off unless you are actively testing stories.

Blocked QoS 1 MQTT privacy publishes receive a local acknowledgement instead of being sent to Facebook. This keeps Messenger's delivery queue moving without leaking the receipt. QoS 2 privacy publishes remain allowed because their multi-stage handshake cannot be safely simulated.

FB Stealth is unofficial and not affiliated with Meta, Facebook, or Messenger. See DISCLAIMER.md.

Privacy

• Permissions are limited to storage plus Facebook/Messenger host access.
• Settings are stored in chrome.storage.sync.
• Protection counters are stored in chrome.storage.local as totals and timestamps only.
• Per-tab pause state is stored in chrome.storage.session.
• The extension does not store message text, story content, names, profile URLs, thread IDs, story IDs, cookies, or credentials.
• Debug mode prints sanitized request classifications to the console only. It does not expose page-readable export globals.

Security

Please report privacy or security issues using the guidance in SECURITY.md. Do not include private messages, account identifiers, cookies, tokens, screenshots with personal data, or other sensitive information in reports.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

Load In Chrome

1. Open chrome://extensions.
2. Enable Developer mode.
3. Click Load unpacked.
4. Select the local fb-stealth project folder.

Development

npm test

Facebook changes internal request names often. Update src/shared/matchers.js when a new read-receipt or typing signal appears. Debug mode prints sanitized request classifications to the page console, but it does not expose export functions or store message content.

After editing the extension, open arc://extensions, press Reload on FB Stealth, then reload every open Facebook/Messenger tab.