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µBlock dynamic filtering: default deny

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Re: µBlock dynamic filtering: default deny

#71

Post by quadrangle »

ndesaulniers wrote: post #68
cantlin wrote: post #53

As the author was kind enough to pick us as an example, here's some background on what some of those requests are doing. hits.theguardian.com points to our Omniture implementation, which is the main tracking suite used for macro-level reporting (like when we say we have X unique monthly browsers, or whatever). So if you want to be invisible to that, leave it blocked. ophan.theguardian.com points to our own analytics…

> It would be cute if there was some way of us hinting to the plugin which domains were needed to not break the site No advertiser or site looking to cash in on ads would abuse that.

Yeah… I was told by someone that if everyone started blocking 3rd-party domains, the advertisers would start figuring out how to deliver their content through the server-side of the 1st-party so that it would be even less clear this was happening. In other words, there's already a way to hint at the plugin that something is needed: deliver it from the primary domain. This is obviously a complex battle for the long haul.

Re: µBlock dynamic filtering: default deny

#73

Post by stingraycharles »

quadrangle wrote: post #71
ndesaulniers wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It would be cute if there was some way of us hinting to the plugin which domains were needed to not break the site No advertiser or site looking to cash in on ads would abuse that.

Yeah… I was told by someone that if everyone started blocking 3rd-party domains, the advertisers would start figuring out how to deliver their content through the server-side of the 1st-party so that it would be even less clear this was happening. In other words, there's already a way to hint at the plugin that something is needed: deliver it from the primary domain. This is obviously a complex battle for the long ha…

As someone who has built and exited an adserving SaaS in the past, I get asked this question almost never -- the advertisers that spend the most money never want to abuse the law.

The same goes for the SuperCookie; everyone knows the technology exists, but it's only the rotten apples in the industry ruining it for everyone else by actually making use of it. I got asked whether we would support this a few times, but it was always asked by the most shadiest of our customers, and a simple "we want to listen to the visitor's intent" sufficed.

The only real risk I see for online privacy is that this sort of stuff will happen en-masse and there will be a powerful lobby to illegalize this behaviour.

Re: µBlock dynamic filtering: default deny

#77

Post by unicornporn »

artlogic wrote: post #30
kmfrk wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ghostery breaks so much stuff, I don't know how people can bother. I've found that Privacy Badger does a great job of blocking third-party tools in a way that rarely breaks anything - in which case it's easy to turn off. That and Ad Muncher for Windows.

I've been using Privacy Badger for 6 months and I can't recommend it enough for non-technical people (or technical people that don't want to debug websites all day long). The one problem I've found is that certain services that use a bookmark/iframe combo (instapaper, for instance), create problems because you want to whitelist instapaper, but aren't given a chance. For that, I recently found: https://tsibley.net/pro…

But it's based on AdBlock code. I started using uBlock instead of AdBlock Plus in order to save some resources. It seems that adding Privacy Badger would introduce that performance hit to the equation again.

Re: µBlock dynamic filtering: default deny

#78

Post by unicornporn »

bmcd87 wrote: post #61
mintplant wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ghostery supports Firefox for Android [1]. For µBlock, there are two tickets open on GitHub [2,3] about Firefox for Android support. Unfortunately, Chrome for Android doesn't support extensions [4]. But if you have a rooted device, you can block ads/trackers/etc. across all apps via AdAway [5], which manages a custom HOSTS file for you. [1] https://www.ghostery.com/en/download [2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/is…

(Disclaimer: I'm a Ghostery developer) In addition to the extension working on Firefox for Android, Ghostery has it's own browser: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ghostery.a... It's pretty new and has some key features that are still in development, but it's getting there.

Oh please, listen to my sentiments. I would LOVE to use that browser of yours, but its unexplainable to me how anyone could stand using a mobile browser without text reflow.

I know Google is not making things easier[1]. Before every app that used WebView had it. Now Opera is alone with this feature on Android. Implementing it would give you a nice competitive edge and make many users happy. Somehow Opera is able to to do it super elegantly with WebKit code.

[1] https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=62378

Re: µBlock dynamic filtering: default deny

#79

Post by unicornporn »

kachnuv_ocasek wrote: post #38
wnevets wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that whitelist the entire host? I would like to block everything but a specific JavaScript file on specific host. This is very easy to do with ghostery

Perhaps, you should just switch to µMatrix.

µMatrix is sadly not available for Firefox.

Re: µBlock dynamic filtering: default deny

#80

Post by mobiuscog »

beagle3 wrote: post #69
unknownian wrote: post #4

The question is: is it more resource-efficient than RequestPolicy?

Policeman is like RequestPolicy, only much better (and it imports RequestPolicy's rules). I haven't tried uBlock/uMatrix yet, but if you like RequestPolicy do give Policeman a try.

Policeman is awesome and is now replacing RequestPolicy for me - thanks for mentioning it. I can't see it available for Chrome yet, which means I have to stick to HTTPSwitchboard I guess.
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