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The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

standard.co.uk

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Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#31
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pi-hole ( https://pi-hole.net/ ) is a great ad blocker that requires no changes to your clients.

I feel like, for those asking for cursory information about setting up an ad blocker, ublock origin should be recommended, and not pi-hole. Ublock Origin is a one click solution that works great for everyone, while pi-hole requires setup and does quite a lot. For instance, when I was using pi-hole, Windows Update and Epic Games Launcher simply stopped working for me. I'm not sure what was going on, it could have been…

I respect your feelings, but Ublock Origin is not available on my Android phone or on my iPad. It's also not available for all browsers. It may not work for you, but for me Pi-hole is a wonderful solution for my whole family, and they don't ever need me to touch their devices in order for it to work for them.

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#35
post #3

Any recommendations for a good ad blocker and other precautions to take?

I know most people trash on Brave, but honestly, if you disable its crypto features (which is just a click away), it's actually a decent browser that blocks almost all ads I see, even on iOS! For example, YouTube has no ads in iOS Brave. Since iOS doesn't allow real browsers and extensions, Brave has been a sanity-saver for me. Pair that with uBlock on desktop and you're golden. 98% of the sites don't break at all ei…

It's also way easier to just tell my mom (for example) to use Brave, rather than explaining extensions, why "uBlock Origin" vs "uBlock", etc.

Single app, all devices, works great out of the box.

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#36
Here are a few things I do to combat nasty websites:

- blacklists entire domains using wildcards (using an "unbound" DNS resolver and forcing all traffic to my DNS resolver, preventing my browser to use DoH -- I can still then use DoH if I want, from unbound)

- reject or drop a huge number of known bad actors, regularly updated: they go into gigantic "ip sets" firewall rules

- (I came up with this one): use a little firewall rule that prevents any IDN from resolving. That's a one line UDP rule and it stops cold dead any IDN homograph attack. Basically searching any UDP packet for the "xn--" string.

I do not care about what this breaks. The Web still works totally fine for me, including Google's G Suite (yeah, I know).

EDIT: just to be clear seen the comments for I realize I wasn't very precise... I'm not saying all IDN domains are bad! What I'm saying is that in my day to day Web surfing, 99.99% of the websites I'm using do not use IDN and so, in my case, blocking IDN, up until today, is totally fine as it not only doesn't prevent me from surfing the Web (I haven't seen a single site I need breaking) but it also protects me from IDN homograph attacks. Your mileage may vary and you live in a country where it's normal to go on website with internationalized domain names, then obviously you cannot simply drop all UDP packets attempting to resolve IDNs.

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#37
Does anyone have any adblockers they recommend that still show "safe" ads (e.g. non-malware) by default, without having to whitelist every site? I'd be open to the security benefits of an adblocker if I could still passively support all the sites I visit.

Edit: changed "good" to "safe" for clarity

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#38
post #3

Any recommendations for a good ad blocker and other precautions to take?

On iOS (but also for mac and tvOS), I took my pick of dns based systems here:

https://encrypted-dns.party/

https://gitlab.com/nitrohorse/ios14-encrypted-dns-mobileconf...

No idea if I should really trust them, or if there’s a better way to install profiles directly from CIRA or Mullvad like I use.

Nice thing is that it’s device wide and all free (hopefully not for malicious intents).

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#39
It is infuriating that Google seems to be doing nothing about scam ads. For years I have been seeing "Click to install iPhone update!!!" ads on YouTube mobile. Easy to have huge profit margins when your company hires no humans to do things like customer support and ad vetting.

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#40
post #5
post #3

Any recommendations for a good ad blocker and other precautions to take?

I use adnauseam ( https://adnauseam.io/ ), which is built on top of ublock origin, and it works pretty well. The generic nuclear option to hide terrible web design, bypass (some) paywalls, and improve performance 1000x is to disable javascript. ublock and adnauseam both have a button to disable all javascript on a page, which is handy when reading articles on sites filled with garbage.

adnauseam is seriously a terrible idea. It's actually dangerous. The idea that you can somehow trick advertisers by polluting your dossier and making it useless to them after filling it with random data is fundamentally flawed.

Every scrap of data collected about you will be used against you. It doesn't matter if it's accurate or not, nobody cares if they data they have about you is accurate, data brokers will happily sell your personal info to anyone even knowing full well that it's got inaccurate and conflicting info in it. Many won't even know because the process is entirely automated.

By automatically clicking on ads and "expressing interest" in random things you're just filling your dossier with ammo which gets handed to others to fire at you. Every random thing you add to your permanent record is one more thing that can only hurt you.

You cannot know what will prejudice someone against you. Maybe one day adnauseam decides to click on something that gets you flagged as having a certain political view, or having a certain sexual orientation, or being an alcoholic, or having a mental illness, or being at a certain income level, or belonging to a certain religion, etc. One day that exact data can cause you to get turned down for a job, or for housing. It can mean that a website charges you more than what your neighbor pays for the same product. It can mean your insurance rates go up next year.

You will never be told when it happens or why. Your health insurance company isn't going to tell you that they raised your rates because you (adnauseam) clicked on too many fast food ads last quarter. You're just suddenly getting a higher bill. Your auto insurance company won't tell you that they raised your rates after you were clicking ads for DUI lawyers, but suddenly they and every other insurance provider you try are quoting you higher monthly prices.

If your browser extension decides to go click on ads about abortions you could even end up being hauled into a texas courtroom and having to defend against charges. Sure, you'd get them thrown out eventually. Probably. But it would still cost you a ton of time and money and stress. The information in your dossier can get you targeted, harassed, or attacked by extremists. It can get be used against you in court rooms. It can get you investigated by three letter agencies. It can be used to impact your 'secret consumer score' or consumer trustworthiness rating.

The information being collected about you is sold to companies, employers, activists, extremists, and law enforcement. That data never goes away. It follows you for the rest of your life and will be used against you in ways you'll never be aware of and cannot today imagine. Filling your dossier with huge amounts of content (random or not) is dangerous and only increases your risk for zero benefit.

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