Chaff

Chaff is a browser privacy companion that helps reduce passive scraping and profiling risk while you browse.

Chaff focuses on user-controlled protection actions:
- Poison selected text with subtle perturbations
- Fill forms with synthetic profile data on demand
- Inject limited noise events only when you explicitly trigger it

Safety-first defaults:
- Safe Mode enabled by default
- No always-on cross-site injection
- Background noise disabled by default
- Manual controls in popup and keyboard shortcuts

Chaff is designed for defensive, user-side privacy hardening in your own browser context.

# Chaff User Manual

## What Chaff Does
Chaff helps reduce tracking by adding harmless privacy noise and text protections while you browse.

## Before You Start
1. Open Chrome and go to `chrome://extensions`.
2. Turn on **Developer mode** (top right).
3. Click **Load unpacked** and select your `chaff` folder.
4. Pin Chaff to your toolbar so it is easy to open.

## First-Time Setup
1. Click the Chaff icon.
2. Keep **Protection Active** on.
3. Leave **Protection Level** on **Medium** to start.
4. Turn on only the features you want.

## Protection Levels (Simple)
- **Low**: light protection, least changes to normal browsing.
- **Medium**: balanced day-to-day setting (recommended).
- **High**: stronger protection, more aggressive behavior.

## Features (What They Mean)
- **Homoglyph Substitution**: replaces some characters with look-alikes to reduce direct text fingerprinting.
- **Zero-Width Injection**: inserts invisible characters into protected text patterns.
- **Background Noise**: generates extra privacy noise in the background.
- **Poison on Paste**: modifies pasted text patterns to make profiling harder.
- **Form Auto-Fill**: fills forms using generated persona data.

## Persona Box
- **Generate Persona** button creates profile data for form filling.
- If it says **No persona**, click generate before using **Fill Form**.

## Whitelist
Use **Whitelisted Sites** for pages where you do not want Chaff actions to run.

## Action Buttons
- **Fill Form**: fills detected fields with persona data.
- **Noise Now**: triggers privacy noise immediately.
- **Poison Selection**: applies text protection to selected text.
- **Reset Stats**: clears current session counters.

## Keyboard Shortcuts
- `Ctrl+Shift+F`: Fill Form
- `Ctrl+Shift+N`: Inject Noise
- `Ctrl+Shift+P`: Poison Selection

## Recommended Daily Setup
1. Keep Protection Active on.
2. Use **Medium** level.
3. Enable `Homoglyph`, `Zero-Width`, and `Poison on Paste`.
4. Keep `Background Noise` off unless you want stronger protection.
5. Add banking/work portals to whitelist if needed.

## Troubleshooting
- **Popup does not respond**: reload the extension on `chrome://extensions`.
- **Feature not running on page**: refresh the page, then try again.
- **Form fill not working**: generate a persona first.
- **Too aggressive**: switch to Low or turn off individual features.

## Safety Notes
- Use this tool for privacy and defensive protection only.
- Respect site rules and laws in your region.