Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Chrome users beware: Manifest v3 is deceitful and threatening

eff.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 396 posts

Re: Chrome users beware: Manifest v3 is deceitful and threatening

#301

Post by cywick »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #198
tux1968 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you happen to know how they make money, or can maintain the project going forward? Seems they don't charge for their browser, and also claim they don't monetize their user's personal information at all.

They get paid to set the default search engine to Google.

That's actually incorrect:

Vivaldi generates revenue from partner deals with search engines. Every time you search using one of the pre-installed search engines, you’re helping us grow, one search at a time. Currently, we work with DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, Startpage, Yahoo!, Bing, and Yandex. The only exception is Google – we don’t make money when you search with Google. However, we know that some of you use this search engine daily, so we include it in Vivaldi.

(Source: https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-business-model/)

The other other source of revenue is bundled partner bookmarks (see again the linked document).

Re: Chrome users beware: Manifest v3 is deceitful and threatening

#302

Post by blub »

cookiengineer wrote: post #295
blub wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since parent tested all of them and they’re not kidding, it follows that yours must be a scam. Unless they didn’t test everything or were exaggerating that is.

Since you made up your mind, you must be one of those scamware devs. Unless you were exaggerating and actually don't use MacOS or Safari anyways.

Not that hard to make ones mind when I personally use two perfectly fine blockers, you posted no proof of your hyperbolic claims that all Safari ad blockers are scams and at the time I replied you hadn’t even posted any names of problematic blockers.

And now you’re calling me a scammer for criticizing your statements…

Re: Chrome users beware: Manifest v3 is deceitful and threatening

#303

Post by kaixi »

gerash wrote: post #228

The article is hollow but from what I understand the gist of the issue is: Google is cutting down on the extensions ability to read and modify your web requests on the fly. As a side effect adblocker type extensions need to pass their blacklist patterns to chrome which will enforce it on their behalf. Chrome cites improved privacy because users won't need to give random extensions full read write access to pretty muc…

Extensions will still be able to read all the requests, just not block them, so Google's argument for privacy is moot.

Given that one of the biggest performance hogs are the ads and tracking scripts on a page, the argument for performance seems sketchy too.

I don't use adblockers myself, as I actually like seeing ads, but Google's arguments are very weak here.

Re: Chrome users beware: Manifest v3 is deceitful and threatening

#304

Post by tblt »

cookiengineer wrote: post #277
tptacek wrote: post #258

It's hard to take EFF seriously when they write so hyperbolically. What's clearly also the case is that Chrome extensions are one of the great modern security and privacy challenges --- to the point where multiple tech company security teams have people whose job it is just to screen them. Another detail that EFF doesn't want to share is that ad blockers are some of the worst offenders --- they demand maximal access…

Every time someone mentions this I have to think about the messed up ecosystem of Safari Webextensions. Safari only allows extensions installed via the apple store, but every single adblocker there is a scam. I'm not kidding you, I audited most of them. Chances are it's either a three years outdated list of adblock plus that doesn't catch anything or it's an extension that replaces all google analytics identifiers wi…

> Wipr doesn't do anything, literally

As somebody currently using Wipr and not seeing any ads, would you mind bridging the gap between your assertions and my reality? Genuinely curious how we could be truthfully so out of step on this.

Re: Chrome users beware: Manifest v3 is deceitful and threatening

#305

Post by hyperman1 »

veeti wrote: post #292
tptacek wrote: post #258

It's hard to take EFF seriously when they write so hyperbolically. What's clearly also the case is that Chrome extensions are one of the great modern security and privacy challenges --- to the point where multiple tech company security teams have people whose job it is just to screen them. Another detail that EFF doesn't want to share is that ad blockers are some of the worst offenders --- they demand maximal access…

There is no decision left to make once this change goes through. You can talk about improved security all you want, but the fact remains that uBlock Origin will be permanently crippled. This by far negates any security or privacy gain that Manifest v3 could possibly make. Switch to Firefox.

This is in fact one of the best arguments pro to do the change:

* Chrome destroys ad blocking

* Advanced users now suffer the same internet as everyone else

* Advanced users will find a solution, and that solution can't be chrome anymore

* This starts an exodus of advanced users .

* Advanced users configure the browsers for everybody else, hence everybody else also joins the exodus

The end result is less of a monopoly.

This is the same mechanism that ultimately killed of IE and moved everybody to chrome: The monopoly of the time got so arrogant they didn't listen to their users, so users fled to a better alternative.

The strange thing is, groups of people have more or less the same tolerance for abuse, know their limits have already been violated for a while, and learn alternatives from each other. As a result, It takes a long time of abuse to trigger an exodus, but when it started, it starts everywhere at the same time. Then the abuser tries stopping the exodus by rolling back only the last change, but that's not enough anymore.

Re: Chrome users beware: Manifest v3 is deceitful and threatening

#306

Post by extropy »

qiqitori wrote: post #269
tptacek wrote: post #258

It's hard to take EFF seriously when they write so hyperbolically. What's clearly also the case is that Chrome extensions are one of the great modern security and privacy challenges --- to the point where multiple tech company security teams have people whose job it is just to screen them. Another detail that EFF doesn't want to share is that ad blockers are some of the worst offenders --- they demand maximal access…

The EFF doesn't need to give "the other side" because the other side is mostly obvious to the target audience (which isn't random people, Google itself is a huge part of the target audience). Note that Google doesn't give the other side either. Also, nothing in politics works like that, if you want to get people to join your cause you don't end everything you say with "But keep in mind that $foo".

Still not giving the other side and using "dangerous" and other "think of the children" terms triggers my bullshit and what are you hiding detector. And the only thing vouching for them is their reputation.

Speaking of reputation EFF has been doing this shady speak for last few years and my respect for them is quite diminished. I suppose they can still do it because they have practicality a monopoly to "protect privacy online" with Apple being a distant second player.

Re: Chrome users beware: Manifest v3 is deceitful and threatening

#307

Post by extropy »

mariusor wrote: post #291
tptacek wrote: post #258

It's hard to take EFF seriously when they write so hyperbolically. What's clearly also the case is that Chrome extensions are one of the great modern security and privacy challenges --- to the point where multiple tech company security teams have people whose job it is just to screen them. Another detail that EFF doesn't want to share is that ad blockers are some of the worst offenders --- they demand maximal access…

> But EFF doesn't trust you to make that decision on your own. But neither does google on the other hand, and they're the ones that can actually do something more about it than writing a blog post.

I think we should expect EFF being on higher moral ground.

That's kinda what we are paying them to be, no?

Google is just a for profit company.

Re: Chrome users beware: Manifest v3 is deceitful and threatening

#308

Post by marban »

cookiengineer wrote: post #277
tptacek wrote: post #258

It's hard to take EFF seriously when they write so hyperbolically. What's clearly also the case is that Chrome extensions are one of the great modern security and privacy challenges --- to the point where multiple tech company security teams have people whose job it is just to screen them. Another detail that EFF doesn't want to share is that ad blockers are some of the worst offenders --- they demand maximal access…

Every time someone mentions this I have to think about the messed up ecosystem of Safari Webextensions. Safari only allows extensions installed via the apple store, but every single adblocker there is a scam. I'm not kidding you, I audited most of them. Chances are it's either a three years outdated list of adblock plus that doesn't catch anything or it's an extension that replaces all google analytics identifiers wi…

AdBlock Pro — Happy with it

Re: Chrome users beware: Manifest v3 is deceitful and threatening

#309

Post by piokoch »

hyperman1 wrote: post #305
veeti wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no decision left to make once this change goes through. You can talk about improved security all you want, but the fact remains that uBlock Origin will be permanently crippled. This by far negates any security or privacy gain that Manifest v3 could possibly make. Switch to Firefox.

This is in fact one of the best arguments pro to do the change: * Chrome destroys ad blocking * Advanced users now suffer the same internet as everyone else * Advanced users will find a solution, and that solution can't be chrome anymore * This starts an exodus of advanced users . * Advanced users configure the browsers for everybody else, hence everybody else also joins the exodus The end result is less of a monopol…

Looking in the internet I see that "94% of Mozilla revenues came through royalties received by search engines to be featured on its Mozilla Firefox browser" I am afraid that at some point Mozilla can be forced to comply and cripple ad blockers too.

Hopefully someone will decide to come up with a totally new browser. I remember times when BitKeeper told Linus that they will somehow try to charge for using their tool to keep Linux kernel source code (can't remember the story, but they managed to irritate Linus, delicately speaking).

Linus sat down and started coding... and created Git.

Unfortunately browser is a more complicated piece of software, but maybe this is also a problem we should solve.

Re: Chrome users beware: Manifest v3 is deceitful and threatening

#310

Post by 1_player »

tblt wrote: post #304
cookiengineer wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time someone mentions this I have to think about the messed up ecosystem of Safari Webextensions. Safari only allows extensions installed via the apple store, but every single adblocker there is a scam. I'm not kidding you, I audited most of them. Chances are it's either a three years outdated list of adblock plus that doesn't catch anything or it's an extension that replaces all google analytics identifiers wi…

> Wipr doesn't do anything, literally As somebody currently using Wipr and not seeing any ads, would you mind bridging the gap between your assertions and my reality? Genuinely curious how we could be truthfully so out of step on this.

Wipr works for me as well. Not as good as uBlock Origin, but blocks most ads on my iPhone.
Post reply on HN