Ask HN: What's the best ad-blocking, privacy-enhancing extension set up? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What's the best ad-blocking, privacy-enhancing extension set up?

#51

Post by ronjouch » Fri, Aug 28, 2015, 7:32 PM UTC

nextos wrote: post #35

ronjouch wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asked myself the same question, did the same experiment, and reached the same conclusion :) . Another unclear thing is the update rate/policy of privacy.trackingprotection's blacklist.

Good to hear :) What's your addon setup then?

Mostly the same as emanuelmaues above, just a bit lighter: uBlock Origin, Self-Destructing Cookies. Differences:

- No HTTPS Everywhere because I (think I) remember to check for HTTPS when it matters, and access those sensitive sites via bookmarks, where I ensure HTTPS is used.

- No uMatrix because it's too much of a hassle, I'm okay with the 90% provided by uBlock Origin.

- A common custom user agent via (firefox / about:config) `general.useragent.override` rather than Random Agent Spoofer, which pops UAs sometimes so obscure that Google freaks out and serves me a no-js version. I'd use it if it provided a choice like "Random among the last five versions on ", currently to do this I'd have to manually exclude tons of browsers.

(Off-topic) out of the privacy stuff and back into regular addons land,

- dotjs to spruce up custom js in a few sites. When GitHub Enterprise say "maybe, someday" to your feature request, that means "do it yourself" ^^.

- (Not an addon, but worth mentioning) userContent.css to manually uncruft/simplify sites I frequently visit. I prefer this to Stylish, it's all in a single .css file in my profile folder; simple to edit and sync across work/home.

- FlashDisable to pretend I do not have flash (to ensure html5 vid is served in priority, many non-top tier video hosts still serve Flash by default) but be able to activate it quickly when needed (flash game, video with no html5 alternative).

- HighlightAll because I'm so used to this feature from all text editors that I take it for granted even in a browser.

- VimFx to keep my hands on the home row as much as possible.

And you, anything crispy to share?

Re: Ask HN: What's the best ad-blocking, privacy-enhancing extension set up?

#52

Post by papaf » Fri, Aug 28, 2015, 7:34 PM UTC

nextos wrote: post #26

ronjouch wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think too this is a good setup. Self-Destructing Cookies, especially, is rarely mentioned in such discussions, but is a godsend to enable cookies for the convenience of staying logged only in domains you trust (e.g. I have: archlinux.org, feedly.com, mozilla.org, stackoverflow.com, ycombinator.com) but not breaking sites that depend on them (e.g. no gmail if you simply disable them). Also, if you use Firefox, enabl…

Yes, but what's the overlap with uBlock Origin of privacy.trackingprotection? It's very unclear to me. After some experiments and log inspections when it was released I concluded uBlock was a superset. Maybe I'm wrong though.

Why do you care about overlap? The green nasties are attacking your privacy in multiple ways, it seems sensible to have redundant layers of protection.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best ad-blocking, privacy-enhancing extension set up?

#53

Post by smackfu » Fri, Aug 28, 2015, 7:37 PM UTC

the_zeroth_law wrote: post #47

smackfu wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not clear that it blocks anything by default.

That's correct; Privacy Badger doesn't block anything by default because it doesn't use a blacklist. Instead, it observes the behavior of third-party domains and blocks them based on their behavior. (So it may take a bit of normal browsing before it starts blocking things.) Also, Privacy Badger recently transitioned from beta to 1.0, so if you last tried it more than a month or so ago, I recommend giving it another s…

That's pretty cool, and I guess I should have read the intro slideshow since it's pretty clearly described in there.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best ad-blocking, privacy-enhancing extension set up?

#54

Post by buckbova » Fri, Aug 28, 2015, 7:44 PM UTC

yrro wrote: post #10

buckbova wrote: post #4

Drop this in your hosts file and set up a refresh script to replace it periodically. http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts

I sincerely hope you don't do this. You're trusting that the people who run that site won't turn malicious in the future; and since your link uses http, you are also trusting that the same applies to their ISP, your ISP, or anyone in between!

Worked literally for a decade. But I suppose anything can happen.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best ad-blocking, privacy-enhancing extension set up?

#55

Post by wdr1 » Fri, Aug 28, 2015, 7:54 PM UTC

discreditable wrote: post #39

> My goal is to make my browser as private as possible with minimal damage to my usual browsing experience. Not very long ago I wrote a guide documenting my specific configuration which has precisely this goal in mind [1]. The short version: disable third-party cookies, enable tracking protection (Firefox only), use uBlock Origin with some extra filters, use HTTPS everywhere, Enforce Click-to-Play and Disable Unneces…

How do you get around the combination of your IP + UA being fairly unique?

Re: Ask HN: What's the best ad-blocking, privacy-enhancing extension set up?

#56

Post by discreditable » Fri, Aug 28, 2015, 9:34 PM UTC

wdr1 wrote: post #55

discreditable wrote: post #39

> My goal is to make my browser as private as possible with minimal damage to my usual browsing experience. Not very long ago I wrote a guide documenting my specific configuration which has precisely this goal in mind [1]. The short version: disable third-party cookies, enable tracking protection (Firefox only), use uBlock Origin with some extra filters, use HTTPS everywhere, Enforce Click-to-Play and Disable Unneces…

How do you get around the combination of your IP + UA being fairly unique?

Generally speaking, you don't. In my case it's worse. As a user of Firefox Nightly my User Agent is more unique than most.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best ad-blocking, privacy-enhancing extension set up?

#57

Post by colsandurz » Fri, Aug 28, 2015, 10:10 PM UTC

proactivesvcs wrote: post #2

Privoxy and, for Firefox, BetterPrivacy and Self-Destructing Cookies.

I second privoxy. I never see ads and the memory usage is low, 0.1% on my 8GB laptop. I use it along with polipo (a caching proxy).

Re: Ask HN: What's the best ad-blocking, privacy-enhancing extension set up?

#58

Post by nextos » Fri, Aug 28, 2015, 10:49 PM UTC

the_zeroth_law wrote: post #50

nextos wrote: post #12

What's the overlap between uBlock Origin and other plugins like Ghostery or Privacy Badger? Or even uMatrix?

One major difference is that Privacy Badger doesn't use a blacklist like the others and really isn't designed for the purpose of ad-blocking. It's designed to prevent non-consensual tracking, so it observes which third-party domains try to store high-entropy cookies, and if it sees a third-party domain doing so across multiple first-party sites, blocks any further third-party requests to that domain. Full disclosure:…

That's good. What plugin setup do you recommend on Firefox to protect ourselves?

Furthermore, I'm concerned about useragent and font metadata attacks. Any recommendations for these?

Re: Ask HN: What's the best ad-blocking, privacy-enhancing extension set up?

#59

Post by nextos » Fri, Aug 28, 2015, 11:28 PM UTC

ronjouch wrote: post #51

nextos wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good to hear :) What's your addon setup then?

Mostly the same as emanuelmaues above, just a bit lighter: uBlock Origin, Self-Destructing Cookies. Differences: - No HTTPS Everywhere because I (think I) remember to check for HTTPS when it matters, and access those sensitive sites via bookmarks, where I ensure HTTPS is used. - No uMatrix because it's too much of a hassle, I'm okay with the 90% provided by uBlock Origin. - A common custom user agent via (firefox / a…

Nice. I just use vimperator with a couple of commands to make switching around proxies simple. Or custom search keywords with multiple arguments autocompleted.

Apart from that ublock origin, https everywhere and privacy badger. Nothing fancy.

Re: Ask HN: What's the best ad-blocking, privacy-enhancing extension set up?

#60

Post by ronjouch » Sat, Aug 29, 2015, 2:16 AM UTC

nextos wrote: post #59

ronjouch wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly the same as emanuelmaues above, just a bit lighter: uBlock Origin, Self-Destructing Cookies. Differences: - No HTTPS Everywhere because I (think I) remember to check for HTTPS when it matters, and access those sensitive sites via bookmarks, where I ensure HTTPS is used. - No uMatrix because it's too much of a hassle, I'm okay with the 90% provided by uBlock Origin. - A common custom user agent via (firefox / a…

Nice. I just use vimperator with a couple of commands to make switching around proxies simple. Or custom search keywords with multiple arguments autocompleted. Apart from that ublock origin, https everywhere and privacy badger. Nothing fancy.

Hey, I didn't know about multiple arguments in search keywords! Are you talking about http://kb.mozillazine.org/Multiple_parameter_keyword_searche... ?