Releasing Middleman Alerter, a Chromium Extension to Warn About Third-Party Reverse Proxies

Published on Jun 4, 2026, filed under tools, misc. (Share this post, e.g., on Mastodon.)

Do you dislike that your site visits are being channeled through Cloudflare, maybe without you knowing? Are you concerned about third parties having access to all connection data? Would you like to know if your traffic goes directly through American or Israeli services?

Another member of the IA Defensa family, Middleman Alerter Chromium is a browser extension that informs when a website is routing their traffic through third-party reverse proxies, that is, networks that can read all page content and credentials (like Akamai, Cloudflare, Fastly, Imperva, and others):

The extension does not collect or share any data with me or third parties. It’s free for personal use, at your own discretion and responsibility. Please report issues and leave suggestions in the IA Defensa forum.

The official release date of the tool is May 28—when Google approved the extension on the Chrome Web Store—, but I’m deliberately spreading out announcements a bit.

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m an engineering lead, guerrilla philosopher, and indie publisher. I’ve worked as a technical lead and engineering manager at various companies (e.g., Google); I’m an active web and tool developer (code optimization, digital defense), a contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and a book author (O’Reilly, Frontend Dogma).

I love trying things—in web development and engineering management, but also in politics and philosophy, where I hold to one idea in particular: that we can only be well if we take good care of everyone. Here on meiert.com I talk about some of my perspectives and experiences. (Interpret charitably but be critical—and share feedback and advice that makes my work better.)