Faced with the wave of criticism it received last November for changing its privacy settings, MetaMask is now incorporating more customisation options. Users of the popular Ethereum (ETH) wallet will now have the option to disable certain features that require their IP address, among others.
MetaMask revises its privacy settings
Following the outcry over the change in the privacy policy of MetaMask’s parent company ConsenSys, the popular Ethereum wallet (ETH) is getting an update that allows its users to change more of their privacy settings.
MetaMask aims to be the standard-setter across crypto wallets for user privacy, security, and transparency
– MetaMask (@MetaMask) February 2, 2023
In the thread written by MetaMask to reveal these improvements, we learn that these new features will be offered to all new wallet users:
“When creating a new wallet, users can click on “Set Advanced Privacy Settings” to change their CPP providers and enable features that send requests to third-party services that help detect phishing and identify incoming transactions, among other things. “
MetaMask users will also be able to change any settings they wish from the “Security and Privacy” section of the browser extension. This includes changing RPC providers as well as the ability to enable or disable certain options such as phishing detection.
RPCs, or Remote Procedure Calls, are communication protocols that are essential to the blockchain and to all decentralised applications. To learn more about this, read our explanation of what an RPC is.
In addition, it will now be indicated next to each available option whether it will need access to certain confidential information to function properly, including your IP address.
How to change these settings
To access these new customization options, start by going to the “Settings” section of MetaMask.
Next, go to the “Security and Privacy” tab. Here you will be able to modify the different features offered by MetaMask according to your preferences. As shown in the screenshot below on the “Show incoming transactions” section, you can see that this option collects your IP address.
Please note that in order to maximise your privacy, you can add some networks yourself or replace some pre-defined ones with a particular RPC. MetaMask’s core networks, including Ethereum and Polygon (MATIC), are set up to work with the Infura RPC.
Today, there are many RPC providers, so it is possible to find alternatives to the natively present RPC. For example, if you want to add Layer 2 Optimism (OP) to MetaMask, you can do so using the Ankr RPC as below.
These new features have generally been well received by the community, which was particularly hostile to the collection of its users’ IP addresses last November. Certainly, privacy is now a major consideration for users in their choice of wallet
