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Chrome disabling uBlock Origin is a serious security threat

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Re: Chrome disabling uBlock Origin is a serious security threat

#31

Post by soraminazuki »

nijave wrote: post #22
asterios33 wrote: post #16

"There are a few alternatives available. Unfortunately, moving to Firefox may not be a viable option for her, especially given Mozilla’s recent behavior." The world has gone crazy. So this relative has casually used the most bloated spyware disguised as a browser for literally a decade, but she can't switch to firefox because 'Mozilla’s recent behavior'.

Isn't the simple middle ground to use a Chrome fork that doesn't block uBlock? Edit: Chromium forks/derivatives

Advocating for the entire browser landscape to be taken over by Chromium is definitely not a middle ground. It's letting the world's largest ad company be the dictator of the web.

Re: Chrome disabling uBlock Origin is a serious security threat

#33

Post by nijave »

baq wrote: post #28
nijave wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the simple middle ground to use a Chrome fork that doesn't block uBlock? Edit: Chromium forks/derivatives

define 'simple'. if chrome ripped the whole extension framework out of the source code, a 'simple' fork will suffer the same fate. (notably Edge also doesn't support uBlock Origin anymore.)

They haven't ripped the whole extension framework (yet...) they just marked 1 extension as "malicious" which causes Chrome to automatically disable it. Presumably this is based on proprietary logic that ties Chrome to the Chrome Web/Add-on Store

Re: Chrome disabling uBlock Origin is a serious security threat

#34

Post by blendergeek »

irjustin wrote: post #14

I'll go against the grain and say this is not a security threat. if missing ublock is a true security concern you shouldn't be using chrome. Because the opposite is not true - that chrome+ublock is keeping you secure from tracking. We just don't want to see ads. Isn't that enough?

The article is about blocking ads that contain malware (which are surprisingly common). Preventing tracking is a whole different ballgame that isn't covered by the article

Re: Chrome disabling uBlock Origin is a serious security threat

#35

Post by tjpnz »

TekMol wrote: post #10

I guess it would be easy to block ads via a proxy? An http proxy in Python is just a few lines of code. It could simply drop the requests to known ad servers. And in Chrome, there is a setting to use a proxy. So all one had to do is run ./my_ad_blocking_proxy.py and set the proxy in Chrome to something like 127.0.0.1:8080?

AdGuard does a good job if you're happy sending them your DNS queries. You'll still want to adopt a layered approach however, and that will involve a browser based ad blocker.

Re: Chrome disabling uBlock Origin is a serious security threat

#36

Post by TekMol »

solardev wrote: post #25
TekMol wrote: post #10

I guess it would be easy to block ads via a proxy? An http proxy in Python is just a few lines of code. It could simply drop the requests to known ad servers. And in Chrome, there is a setting to use a proxy. So all one had to do is run ./my_ad_blocking_proxy.py and set the proxy in Chrome to something like 127.0.0.1:8080?

No, it takes way more than that. That's basically what running a Pihole does, which barely blocks anything these days. Good ad blocking requires you to be able to look at decrypted HTTPS traffic and remove content from the DOM, including stuff added after the fact by Javascript. That's why uBlock Origin works better than Adguard (which is a https MITM ad blocker) and why Adguard works better than Pihole (which doesn'…

Ok, but the proxy could insert JS code into the html page which does what uBlock Origin does, couldn't it?

This would give the same flexibility without the need for a browser plugin.

Re: Chrome disabling uBlock Origin is a serious security threat

#37

Post by jraph »

everdrive wrote: post #23
nijave wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a big deal on the desktop and a small deal on the laptop, ad blocking gives a noticeable performance gain on Android. Years ago when I had one of those Intel Atom netbooks you could tell a pretty big difference since it was pretty RAM constrained.

This is unpopular every time I say it, but by in large people just shouldn't be browsing the web on mobile. Every single aspect of the experience is worse, and is likely to continue to get worse over time: - tiny phone screen - objectively worse mobile-site - far worse touch-screen-based UI - the entire iOS side of things has far fewer choices for any sort of effective ad blocking Is it possible for a savvy technolog…

> This is unpopular every time I say it

Speaking for me, but this might be because while your points are valid:

> Every single aspect of the experience is worse

this is wrong (I can tell you that when my SO falls asleep hugging me in the bed, the mobile is a far better experience than a laptop to browse the web for instance - the tiny screen is a feature in this case), and it seems you are missing the elephants in the room that explain why people are using mobile despite those issues, and you are not addressing the use cases.

This makes your comment read like you are disconnected from reality. You might not be wrong, and it might just be a matter of changing the perspective a bit. In the new perspective, you would show that you understand why people actually browse the web on mobile and address the issues from there.

"You should not browse the web from a mobile" doesn't help at all. Most people do it, and although it's imperfect, people seem to go on on their lives anyway.

You probably need to motivate your view a bit more (so we can go from "is it indeed the case that we should stop browsing the web from a mobile?" to "this person is right, we should definitely stop doing this, what now?"), and address the specific use cases where people use the mobile and provide alternatives.

Alternatives like "just don't browse at the bus stop, allow your mind to be bored / to relax a bit" are perfectly valid. One can disagree with the proposal, but that's one solution.

Re: Chrome disabling uBlock Origin is a serious security threat

#38

Post by nijave »

soraminazuki wrote: post #31
nijave wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the simple middle ground to use a Chrome fork that doesn't block uBlock? Edit: Chromium forks/derivatives

Advocating for the entire browser landscape to be taken over by Chromium is definitely not a middle ground. It's letting the world's largest ad company be the dictator of the web.

I never advocated for that. There's nothing saying a fork has to be 100% in sync with upstream and can cherry-pick what parts it wants to keep. Besides that, there's other Blink-based browsers which are very similar but another level removed from Google

Using a fork to work around Google marking addons are malicious seems like a middle ground between "living with ads" and "using a whole new browser the author has political issues with"

Re: Chrome disabling uBlock Origin is a serious security threat

#39

Post by pacifika »

baq wrote: post #32

Sad realization: blocking ad blockers is copy protection from a decade or two ago and blocking ads is nowadays basically cracking websites and browsers.

HTML is a human readable source editable interactive document format, which can be optimised for reading.

When I peel an apple to optimise it for eating I’m not cracking an apple.

Re: Chrome disabling uBlock Origin is a serious security threat

#40

Post by nijave »

phito wrote: post #21
asterios33 wrote: post #16

"There are a few alternatives available. Unfortunately, moving to Firefox may not be a viable option for her, especially given Mozilla’s recent behavior." The world has gone crazy. So this relative has casually used the most bloated spyware disguised as a browser for literally a decade, but she can't switch to firefox because 'Mozilla’s recent behavior'.

It's crazy the mental gymnastics people will go through to justify not using Firefox. They should just be honest and say they're too lazy to switch.

I've been using Firefox for nearly 15 years and there's technical reasons, too. Mainly memory leaks (which I haven't noticed for a few years anymore) and loading just "feels" slower. Webrender with GPU acceleration helped but it was much more complicated poking at about:config than it "just working"

Recently, I've noticed a "this SaaS only works in Chrome" trend again. Usually that means "only works in Blink" but it still sucks if you need to use SaaS (for work) that has this silly limitation. I've noticed cheaper restaurant web ordering software tends to have problems in Firefox.

For technical or even semi-technical folks those aren't an issue. For non-technical folks, those issues above can easily lead to a poorer web experience without them understanding why. On the other hand, the author didn't actually call out technical issues

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