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Which add-ons are you referring to? AFAIK the big 3 are AdBlock (Plus? There's so many jeez), uBlock (and Origin), and, in a distant third, Privacy Badger.

by Osmose 11y ago

Silhouette 11y ago
Adblock Edge was discontinued a little while back but had effectively replaced the not-fully-blocking Adblock Plus of recent months. ABE's UI integration broke in another recent FF update, but the blocking itself continued to work usefully until FF42, at which point apparently it ceased doing anything useful at all. uBlock Origin is apparently now the blessed alternative and is OK for blocking most ads, but I immediately found a few potential tracking issues with its default lists, and its UI is awful. Ghostery also isn't blocking various trackers effectively now, even though its UI still claims it has detected and blocked them. I can't 100% guarantee that's FF42 if Ghostery also updated its lists at almost exactly the same time, but that's when I saw things like Facebook Connect start hitting FB servers even though it's supposedly blocked. This is almost a brand new machine, BTW, which just happened to update FF and lead to changes in the plug-ins a few days after initial set-up. There's relatively little chance of odd things going on or historical baggage distorting these results. Bottom line: The day I bought the machine and installed FF and my usual set up add-ons, my browsing experience was fine, and then a few days later FF updated to 42, and my browsing experience immediately sucked.
- gorhill 11y ago
  > I immediately found a few potential tracking issues with its default lists I am curious: what are these "few potential tracking issues" specifically? Whatever default lists uBO is using, unlike with ABE (which is essentially ABP filtering engine), users have the last words in what is blocked: - The `important` filter option can be used to override exception filters.[1] - Dynamic filtering override all static filters.[2] For example, you do not need a special filter list to block Facebook everywhere, it's a matter of a few point-and-click to block it everywhere without any way for any static filter to counter it.[3] * * * [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-syntax#network-filters-options https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-syntax#... [2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Overview-of-uBlock's-network-filtering-engine https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Overview-of-uBlock's-... [3] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-to-easily-reduce-privacy-exposure https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-to...
  - Silhouette 11y ago
    Some specific examples I've noticed on the privacy side are pinging a Facebook server when a page uses Facebook Connect, and allowing the various web font services. It's certainly possible to customise uBlock Origin to prevent these things. However, I couldn't immediately see any of the other suggested lists that would have blocked some of these potential privacy/tracking issues either, which suggests that not only do I need to manually block them if I want to stop the tracking, I also need to manually update those lists. In contrast, with a couple of fire-and-forget plug-ins I've been installing as standard for years until recent FF updates broke them, I very rarely had to customise anything manually. They just worked as standard, and I trusted them to keep working and never noticed any significant problems, until now.
    - gorhill 11y ago
      > I couldn't immediately see any of the other suggested lists Fanboy's Anti-ThirdpartySocial is right there in the list of lists, under the Social header. > In contrast, with a couple of fire-and-forget plug-ins I've been installing as standard for years until recent FF updates broke them Ok, my answer was meant to address your point that uBO was no replacement for ABE, as you stated "uBlock Origin is apparently now the blessed alternative [to ABE]".
      - Silhouette 11y ago
        Fanboy's Anti-ThirdpartySocial is right there in the list of lists, under the Social header. And it doesn't block any of the things I mentioned. The domain connect.facebook.com isn't in there, for example, and I ran into a page running a script from there within five minutes of switching to the new plug-ins. Ok, my answer was meant to address your point that uBO was no replacement for ABE Sorry, I'm not sure where I said anything like that. I explicitly noted that uBO was apparently being promoted as the successor to ABE, as you seem to have noticed. I just also noted that the plug-ins I've got running now aren't as good in some respects as the ones that worked just fine for a long time until recent FF changes.
        11y ago

Which add-ons are you referring to? AFAIK the big 3 are AdBlock (Plus? There's so many jeez), uBlock (and Origin), and, in a distant third, Privacy Badger.

by Osmose 11y ago

Which add-ons are you referring to? AFAIK the big 3 are AdBlock (Plus? There's so many jeez), uBlock (and Origin), and, in a distant third, Privacy Badger.

Silhouette 11y ago

Adblock Edge was discontinued a little while back but had effectively replaced the not-fully-blocking Adblock Plus of recent months. ABE's UI integration broke in another recent FF update, but the blocking itself continued to work usefully until FF42, at which point apparently it ceased doing anything useful at all. uBlock Origin is apparently now the blessed alternative and is OK for blocking most ads, but I immediately found a few potential tracking issues with its default lists, and its UI is awful. Ghostery also isn't blocking various trackers effectively now, even though its UI still claims it has detected and blocked them. I can't 100% guarantee that's FF42 if Ghostery also updated its lists at almost exactly the same time, but that's when I saw things like Facebook Connect start hitting FB servers even though it's supposedly blocked. This is almost a brand new machine, BTW, which just happened to update FF and lead to changes in the plug-ins a few days after initial set-up. There's relatively little chance of odd things going on or historical baggage distorting these results. Bottom line: The day I bought the machine and installed FF and my usual set up add-ons, my browsing experience was fine, and then a few days later FF updated to 42, and my browsing experience immediately sucked.

gorhill 11y ago
> I immediately found a few potential tracking issues with its default lists I am curious: what are these "few potential tracking issues" specifically? Whatever default lists uBO is using, unlike with ABE (which is essentially ABP filtering engine), users have the last words in what is blocked: - The `important` filter option can be used to override exception filters.[1] - Dynamic filtering override all static filters.[2] For example, you do not need a special filter list to block Facebook everywhere, it's a matter of a few point-and-click to block it everywhere without any way for any static filter to counter it.[3] * * * [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-syntax#network-filters-options https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Static-filter-syntax#... [2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Overview-of-uBlock's-network-filtering-engine https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Overview-of-uBlock's-... [3] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-to-easily-reduce-privacy-exposure https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-to...
- Silhouette 11y ago
  Some specific examples I've noticed on the privacy side are pinging a Facebook server when a page uses Facebook Connect, and allowing the various web font services. It's certainly possible to customise uBlock Origin to prevent these things. However, I couldn't immediately see any of the other suggested lists that would have blocked some of these potential privacy/tracking issues either, which suggests that not only do I need to manually block them if I want to stop the tracking, I also need to manually update those lists. In contrast, with a couple of fire-and-forget plug-ins I've been installing as standard for years until recent FF updates broke them, I very rarely had to customise anything manually. They just worked as standard, and I trusted them to keep working and never noticed any significant problems, until now.
  - gorhill 11y ago
    > I couldn't immediately see any of the other suggested lists Fanboy's Anti-ThirdpartySocial is right there in the list of lists, under the Social header. > In contrast, with a couple of fire-and-forget plug-ins I've been installing as standard for years until recent FF updates broke them Ok, my answer was meant to address your point that uBO was no replacement for ABE, as you stated "uBlock Origin is apparently now the blessed alternative [to ABE]".
    - Silhouette 11y ago
      Fanboy's Anti-ThirdpartySocial is right there in the list of lists, under the Social header. And it doesn't block any of the things I mentioned. The domain connect.facebook.com isn't in there, for example, and I ran into a page running a script from there within five minutes of switching to the new plug-ins. Ok, my answer was meant to address your point that uBO was no replacement for ABE Sorry, I'm not sure where I said anything like that. I explicitly noted that uBO was apparently being promoted as the successor to ABE, as you seem to have noticed. I just also noted that the plug-ins I've got running now aren't as good in some respects as the ones that worked just fine for a long time until recent FF changes.
      - 11y ago