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Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

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Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#371

Post by ndiddy »

shevy-java wrote: post #142
coldpie wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had a glimpse of that antitrust future on the horizon with the previous admin. This spooked all the big tech weirdos so much that they put their weight behind the other guy and, well, they won. Antitrust is dead for another generation. Yay.

Well, the current cronies that run the USA may seem to have won for the time being, but sooner or later the population in the USA will realise how much fudged up the orange clown is. Only about 30% approval rating - that will continue to dwindle.

The Democrats already tried out the idea that Trumpism would blow over and everything would go back to "normal" with Biden's 2020 campaign, but it didn't really turn out that way. Right-wing reactionary politics has been overrepresented in the US since its founding due to state based representation, and I expect that this will continue to be the case for as long as the US exists in its current form.

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#372

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

beloch wrote: post #174

Ad blocking has become a safety issue. My parents are at an age where they fall for things. If a malicious ad pops up and offers to install McAfee, some other form of crapware, or outright scamware, they'll click that ad and install the thing. Then I'll get called over when the computer starts acting screwy. If Google, MS, etc. had ever gotten together and developed a way to filter malicious ads out of their own ad s…

> filter malicious ads out of their own ad services

It's worse than that. Google turned their exploit delivery platform into Google Tag Manager so they can be employed on more than just ads.

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#373

Post by firecall »

Night_Thastus wrote: post #25

I know Firefox's share of browser share has dwindled to almost nothing. I know sooner or later, well within my lifetime, it will be gone. But I will keep using it until they pry it from my hands. And if they do, I'll use forks until those break down too. I can't stand Google, or what Chrome has become. No single company should have such unilateral control over the internet and its information.

I'm more of an optimist!

We've been here before with Windows and IE dominance!

IE peaked at ~95% market share, and windows peaked at ~97%.

Broadly it seems to me that Google is behaving much like MS did.

But who knows, everything is the same and different this time around.

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#374

Post by antonymoose »

malfist wrote: post #2

Switch to firefox

I’ve had quite a few issues with Firefox crashing or otherwise behaving poorly in recent years.

Switched over to Brave and have had perhaps a day or two of failed ad blocking on YT. Otherwise it’s been a rock solid experience and the built in Tor is nice when I need to quickly test geo rules.

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#375

Post by beloch »

Eueudhsbsj32 wrote: post #246
yakz wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A problem is that the platform owners argue that this kind of stuff is why they need to put up a security gate that prevents you from installing whatever you want on your own device while also allowing you to install the malware from the ads (... maybe because they want to control what you can install more than they care about the malware?)

> On goes Firefox, uBlock Origin, and a couple other extensions. They don't care what browser they use. I did the same with my mom, but then her broker and doctor's websites started complaining that they will only run on a supported browser, i.e., Chrome. I've gotten her to still use Firefox for most other things, but it's not easy.

A user-agent spoofer like Chrome Mask is helpful here:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/chrome-mask/

It's off by default and has to be turned on per site, but will automatically stay on for subsequent visits. Test the site with it to be sure it works for your mom. Most sites that insist on enforcing Chrome-only user-agents run just fine on Firefox. I've encountered a few that run even better on Firefox than they do on Chrome.

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#376

Post by tdeck »

beloch wrote: post #174

Ad blocking has become a safety issue. My parents are at an age where they fall for things. If a malicious ad pops up and offers to install McAfee, some other form of crapware, or outright scamware, they'll click that ad and install the thing. Then I'll get called over when the computer starts acting screwy. If Google, MS, etc. had ever gotten together and developed a way to filter malicious ads out of their own ad s…

Google doesn't care about this. Try searching for a locksmith in your area on Google and the top results are all scans.

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#377

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

transcriptase wrote: post #361
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Ad blocking has become a safety issue. My parents are at an age where they fall for things. If a malicious ad pops up and offers to install McAfee, some other form of crapware, or outright scamware, they'll click that ad and install the thing. I've been using the internet since the 80s. This has always been the case. Even before graphical browsers.

Nonsense. Before the advent of those first “you’re the 1000th visitor” banners or relatively harmless “worms” spready by literal .exe files sent by email in the early 2000s… most of the internet could be trusted by default. And at that point the blast radius was so hilariously small, some rando compromising your computer was a nuisance versus a threat to your financial wellbeing.

Viruses were common on FTP sites and BBSs. They weren't all benign. DOS in particular had zero protections against damaging code. Bot armies hadn't been developed yet so malicious destruction was just as likely an outcome.

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#379

Post by WestCoader »

cobbzilla wrote: post #336
saghm wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite story of just how little people who aren't as tech savvy don't differentiate between different parts of the browser UI (which naturally leads to clicking things that are best left unclicked) is when my grandmother told me her "internet was broken" and asked me to fix it. I was mentally preparing for a call to Verizon or something, but no, when she finally showed me, it turned out that one of the bookmarks…

It was even worse in the 90s/00s - on Windows, the IE browser icon was literally labeled “The Internet” iirc there was a story in The Onion about someone who “accidentally deleted The Internet” on their Windows system and the whole Internet stopped working. They were so sorry, maybe it was in the Recycle Bin, there was still hope for the world, lol

This, Jen...is The Internet.

Re: Google Has Removed MV2 Extensions from the Chrome Web Store, Including UBO

#380

Post by beloch »

nickff wrote: post #228
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tangentially related, but has anyone else noticed a big increase in fraud attempts over the last year or two? I hardly remember any a while back, but I've gotten probably a dozen calls this year that go "hey this is AmEx please confirm your credit card number" or some such.

Phone call scams seem to ebb and flow depending on which 'sucker lists' you're on. Online scams appear to be persistently on the rise, both against consumers and organizations (businesses, non-profits, and governments). I suspect that LLM-AI will be a boon for scammers of all sorts, but particularly for phone and video-call scammers.

Every now and then I hear advice to the effect that saying even a single word to a robocaller will get your number flagged for more, so you should just answer silently and hang-up. Whenever I follow that advice, I get more and more calls. Then I start engaging with callers to waste their time and resources. I press numbers, try to get to speak to a human, and then generally mess with them if I do get a human. That usually takes care of the calls for a while.
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