You may have come across something called Shinigami Eyes, someone saying they are tagged red

and so
on, and are wondering what all this is about?

Shinigami Eyes is a browser plugin (and additional optional string of data you may choose to add to your
internet browser so it can do something outside its usual abilities) that exists for the purpose of
highlighting names of people in different colours, depending on whether the creator judges them to be a
“trans ally” or “transphobic”. Red is for “enemies”, green is for “friends”.

You can only see this information if you download the plugin (I recommend against downloading it, for
reasons I’ll list later on) and you can only report people if you have it downloaded. The data is stored on
the creator’s private server. The plugin collects data and displays highlights on Facebook, Twitter,
Reddit, Tumblr, Medium, YouTube, Wikipedia articles, search engine results and all the sites with Disqus
comments.

You may wonder if you can remove the colour from your name, but since only the creator holds any
deciding power over that, you may be out of luck. You may be tempted to download the plugin yourself
and change your name from red to green, but it will still display as red to anyone but yourself if or until
the creator decides to change it. In short, it is not the number of people reporting someone that decides
on whether someone is “transphobic”, all the power lies in one person alone.

Further on, there is no way of knowing or guaranteeing if only reports are being collected from you, a
person who installed this plugin! The only guarantee is the creator’s word. I feel confident on calling this
piece of code a spyware.

You may have also noticed that you yourself weren’t asked if you want someone else to have access to
your name. If you are within the EU territory, you probably know about the recent law on data collection
and retention. This plugin is illegally holding your data on an unknown server, by an unknown person of
unknown intentions and you have no idea how that data will be used and for what purposes!

If you are wondering what you can do, then go and report the plugin and give it negative marks:

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/shinigami-eyes/

Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shinigami-
eyes/ijcpiojgefnkmcadacmacogglhjdjphj

If enough people do this, something will change. Tell them this makes you feel unsafe, tell them this is
virtual stalking, violence enabling, privacy violation, illegal, think of keywords that make your skin crawl
and tell them how you feel about this and why.

Next thing you can do concerns the EU residents. Your rights and identity on the internet are protected.
You have rights. Act on them. All the information is lain out here:
https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/internet-telecoms/data-protection-online-
privacy/index_en.htm

There is also a pdf document within that article that will send you to your country’s data protection
agency: https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/just/document.cfm?doc_id=48619

Contact your authorities, write mails, call them by phone, make yourself heard. There is no need to stay
silent and subservient to a common bully. Let’s all work together to take this plugin down