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Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster

disconnect.me

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Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster

#51

Post by datashaman »

jzelinskie wrote: post #38
byoogle wrote: post #10

The source is at: https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect

I recently tried to switch from Ghostery to Disconnect. It was basically a wash in terms of frequency of broken pages. However two things did bother me a little: - The default settings had Disconnect fighting with HTTPS Everywhere and caused resource contention in Chrome. Please follow the Unix philosophy and just recommend users install HTTPS Everywhere instead of having a naive implementation embedded in your unrel…

When you say 'it was basically a wash', it is not clear what you mean. Which one breaks more pages?

Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster

#52

Post by josephlord »

datashaman wrote: post #51
jzelinskie wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently tried to switch from Ghostery to Disconnect. It was basically a wash in terms of frequency of broken pages. However two things did bother me a little: - The default settings had Disconnect fighting with HTTPS Everywhere and caused resource contention in Chrome. Please follow the Unix philosophy and just recommend users install HTTPS Everywhere instead of having a naive implementation embedded in your unrel…

When you say 'it was basically a wash', it is not clear what you mean. Which one breaks more pages?

I think it means that there is no clear winner, they both break about the same number of pages.

Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster

#53

Post by jarofgreen »

Schlaefer wrote: post #46
kiba wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only an arm race if a lot of people uses it and it becomes a problem to business owners.

Sad truth is: all these "privacy" plugins break ads. Many people install them for that purpose alone and use privacy as excuse. Even if a website provide local ads because it values the privacy of its users: those are blocked too. From a website owner's perspective privacy plugins are ad-blockers.

They only break ads if ads are big JS things that have privacy implications - most ads are, but they don't have to be.

I run a website that has one sponsor and their ads aren't blocked by privacy tools - because it's just some static HTML text, link and an image on the page. So I'm not sure what "local ads" you are referring to.

(In much the same way, I don't see a whole bunch of ads because I use a Flashblocker ... but ads don't have to be flash)

> From a website owner's perspective privacy plugins are ad-blockers.

If that's how a website owner thinks, then I'd say they have a very narrow idea of what an ad can be.

Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster

#54

Post by antihero »

urza wrote: post #45

I am using StartPage https://startpage.com/ as my search engine and am very happy with it. They essentially redirect your search query to google and return you the result. But they don't collect your IP nor anything else. https://startpage.com/eng/protect-privacy.html

Neat, and idea id there is there something like this that retains Google's handy features and also doesn't look like something from the nineties?

Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster

#55

Post by maxerickson »

Drakim wrote: post #47
philtar wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would never, ever, spend time testing something that changes my code. Today it changes it one way, tomorrow another. That's like trying to replace the screen on your phone and then complaining that it doesn't work and that Samsung/Apple should test their devices with your screen installation skills.

If a resource fails to load, do you not care about that also?

Indeed. I think I first installed Adblock because b.scorecardresearch.com was consistently the slowest element on a page, and it was somehow quite annoying (don't recall).

(Of course I now have no idea if they ever improved performance)

Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster

#56

Post by sdfjkl »

Schlaefer wrote: post #46
kiba wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's only an arm race if a lot of people uses it and it becomes a problem to business owners.

Sad truth is: all these "privacy" plugins break ads. Many people install them for that purpose alone and use privacy as excuse. Even if a website provide local ads because it values the privacy of its users: those are blocked too. From a website owner's perspective privacy plugins are ad-blockers.

You make it sound like there was something wrong with choosing which content you view.

Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster

#57

Post by userbinator »

joosters wrote: post #41
thomasfromcdnjs wrote: post #2

As these become more popular we shall see a return to server analytics. Time to install AwStats...

I wish more people used server analytics. Less privacy risk to the user, along with a faster and less congested internet connection...

Agreed, I'm perfectly fine with the site I'm visiting collecting info like IP, user agent, etc. but not with the idea of some centralised entity doing it. (That's also what I do with my own site.)

Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster

#58

Post by ams6110 »

allendoerfer wrote: post #39
ams6110 wrote: post #20

You can achive a lot of this without using any browser extensions by simply using a hosts file such as the one at http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm (that one is Windows-oriented but it works fine in linux also). Or you could run your own dns but that's a bit more complicated to set up.

I like the clean approach, but hesitate to use my hosts file for blocking unwanted stuff on my development machine. It is 3:00 am the app breaks in production while the development version magically works. You question your ability as a developer and a human being in general while blaming your browser, your os, your DNS secretly knowing in the back of your head, that that you must have done something really, really s…

As I generally just block ad sites, I haven't had any real issues using the hosts file that way. Obviously it's not a good idea to block resources needed by your app. I have had similar experiences though, where I put a dev machine ip in my host file with a production domain name, to test stuff before the name was actually live in the DNS, then later being confused about why the "live" site wasn't showing some content (duh... still pointing at the dev machine).

Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster

#59

Post by Schlaefer »

jarofgreen wrote: post #53
Schlaefer wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sad truth is: all these "privacy" plugins break ads. Many people install them for that purpose alone and use privacy as excuse. Even if a website provide local ads because it values the privacy of its users: those are blocked too. From a website owner's perspective privacy plugins are ad-blockers.

They only break ads if ads are big JS things that have privacy implications - most ads are, but they don't have to be. I run a website that has one sponsor and their ads aren't blocked by privacy tools - because it's just some static HTML text, link and an image on the page. So I'm not sure what "local ads" you are referring to. (In much the same way, I don't see a whole bunch of ads because I use a Flashblocker ...…

Small businesses don't reinvent ads or analytics, they rotate banners and that's it. They also don't implement their own software but use third party tools/plugins to manage their ads.

Ghosterly and Co blocks those common third party solutions even when run locally. E.g. from the Ghostery source:

    "type":"analytics",
          …
         "pattern":"\\/piwik\\.(js|php)",
or

    "type":"ad",
          …
         "pattern":"\\/adpeeps\\.php",

Re: Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster

#60

Post by ams6110 »

Schlaefer wrote: post #48
byoogle wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m the developer of Disconnect and agree with you, but … To back up the op and gp, I’m seeing more and more sites that don’t degrade gracefully when their analytics service doesn’t load. I do think devs should check that their site still works when non-essential services fail to load because, even when the user isn’t running Disconnect or a similar app, this scenario is bound to happen — e.g., when there’s a network…

Many companies consider controlling essential to do business. But even if you disagree, you would do end user support a huge favor if you could mention that "It alters the webpages you visit and may break them." next to the download button.

Not a bad idea, but I'm thinking that most folks who are savvy enough to install Disconnect, Ghostery, NoScript, etc. are going to be aware that "stuff might break."
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