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uBlock Origin CNAME uncloaking now supports filtering by IP address

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Re: uBlock Origin CNAME uncloaking now supports filtering by IP address

#21

Post by itohihiyt »

lelandbatey wrote: post #10

As an example of what CNAME cloaking is, let's say that a SAAS provider A wants to provide you, company Q, with fancy ad tracking software. In the olden days, they'd tell you to embed a script at e.g. https://A-ads-tracking.example into your website at address https://q-company.example To block those ads, blocklists that uBlock Origin use have rules then that say "block requests being made to the domain name A-ads-tr…

And this is a good reason to block all JavaScript in unlock advanced and slowly whitelist the scripts you see until the site works properly. Slow and error prone but once you get used to it it's a breeze. And you're completely immune to this sort of shittery.

Re: uBlock Origin CNAME uncloaking now supports filtering by IP address

#22

Post by beeflet »

jajko wrote: post #12
itohihiyt wrote: post #5

uBlock Origin is what makes Firefox even greater and definitely one big reason I use Firefox over Chrome etc. It make the Internet browsable.

I moved many years ago to this combo, and never saw a single reason to switch away. Same for android phone, the only usable mobile web experience I've seen. Those few sites over a decade that had some display issues had issues also under chrome. Plus I personally consider ads a cancer of modern society. White and not so white lies, manipulation... nothing respectable regardless (or because ) of tremendous money circu…

I mean there are appropriate applications for advertising (like classifieds in a newspaper), but there is no reason why advertising should be so pervasive that it requires a massive surveillance apparatus like it does today. Advertisements are the reason why everyone switched from TV to Netflix, and that's back when cable TV was a paid service.

secushare[1] makes the case that this is because the internet lacks a secure micropayments layer, so the funding model for everything has to be advertising-based instead of patronage-based. Paypal and the like are exploited as cash cows because of their centralized nature. Cryptocurrencies were later tried but have technical limitations that broadly prohibit this use case (even with payment channels/LN).

[0] https://secushare.org/broken-internet

Re: uBlock Origin CNAME uncloaking now supports filtering by IP address

#23

Post by wild_pointer »

vifon wrote: post #4

The title seems to be wrong, uBlock Origin supported it for many years at this point (only on Firefox). This seems to be a refactor of that code, not a whole new feature.

Well, it does support it now. It supported it before, too :P

Re: uBlock Origin CNAME uncloaking now supports filtering by IP address

#24

Post by hypeatei »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #8
ceejayoz wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Ads and analytics providers have started doing this to get around third-party cookie protections.

I always find this development curious. About a decade ago I worked in this space. When someone brought up ad blockers I just said "put the analytics on our main domain. No one is going to block the entire website". The answer I got was "no one would ever do that because of the implications of serving advertising from your main domain". Yet, here we are.

What are the implications?

Re: uBlock Origin CNAME uncloaking now supports filtering by IP address

#25

Post by TheGlav »

jeanlucas wrote: post #7

It did not hit me yet, but I'm already rewriting my extensions to firefox to switch if Chrome really axes uBO

It's not if. It's when. It has been 'when' since 2020. It is coming. It is not going to not come. It will be here in mere releases. Get ready.

Re: uBlock Origin CNAME uncloaking now supports filtering by IP address

#26

Post by bongodongobob »

jrockway wrote: post #20
404mm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such an intrusion of privacy. I wish I could just disable cookies entirely but the usability of many webpages just goes down. I should not be punished for not wanting 3rd party trackers.

Before I get too alarmed someone would have to tell me how an adsite.com cookie is being sent to adsite.example.com. This workaround seems to let adsite.com profile me as well as example.com already can, but it loses the ability to correlate my activity across example2.com and example.com with a single cookie. (I guess ad providers have gotten good enough to not need cookies? Like they know my browser window size, in…

Browser profiling has been a thing for at least a decade if I'm not mistaken.

Re: uBlock Origin CNAME uncloaking now supports filtering by IP address

#27

Post by sidewndr46 »

hypeatei wrote: post #24
sidewndr46 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find this development curious. About a decade ago I worked in this space. When someone brought up ad blockers I just said "put the analytics on our main domain. No one is going to block the entire website". The answer I got was "no one would ever do that because of the implications of serving advertising from your main domain". Yet, here we are.

What are the implications?

It more or less boiled down to "we would be labeled an advertiser and not a destination for information on the internet". Like being an advertiser stopped people from using Google search or something

Re: uBlock Origin CNAME uncloaking now supports filtering by IP address

#28

Post by TheGlav »

Exuma wrote: post #9

Is chrome going to block uBO im never up to date on the latest. I do know theyre allowing 3rd party cookies now... so maybe theres a chance

They're not blocking uBO, they're removing the features in the browser that allowed uBO to work by releasing new plugin APIs, "Manifest v3". They're eliminating the key APIs needed for uBO to identify things that it shouldn't load, and then not load them. Google claims this was for "performance" or "security" reasons. Of course, the only major 'performance' or 'security' affected is the ability to identify, intercept, and stop harmful or ad related downloads before they start.

Re: uBlock Origin CNAME uncloaking now supports filtering by IP address

#29

Post by debit-freak »

hypeatei wrote: post #24
sidewndr46 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find this development curious. About a decade ago I worked in this space. When someone brought up ad blockers I just said "put the analytics on our main domain. No one is going to block the entire website". The answer I got was "no one would ever do that because of the implications of serving advertising from your main domain". Yet, here we are.

What are the implications?

Presumably that adblockers (or rather their users) would object to blocking domains that folks might actually want to load content from. I can’t imagine “domain” is the only signal one could use to identify ads, though. To truly befuddle them you’d make advertisements truly indistinguishable from content. This is not trivial.

Re: uBlock Origin CNAME uncloaking now supports filtering by IP address

#30

Post by 627467 »

bluGill wrote: post #17
sidewndr46 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find this development curious. About a decade ago I worked in this space. When someone brought up ad blockers I just said "put the analytics on our main domain. No one is going to block the entire website". The answer I got was "no one would ever do that because of the implications of serving advertising from your main domain". Yet, here we are.

News payers used to all serve their own ads including in house sales and design. Frankly with how key advertising is I don't understand why anyone would out source it.

This. Everyone and their grandma decided it's cool for Google and others to decide what should display on your website next to your content because of "magic online advertising".

How much of the efficiency of online advertising comes from the actual "art" of tracking users and their preferences to display "personalized" ads vs the "efficiencies" from firing/outsourcing your marketing, ad sales and creative workforce.

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