5 ms·
Don't all ad-blockers work with (regex-like) rule lists these days?
by mthoms 6y ago
Don't all ad-blockers work with (regex-like) rule lists these days?
- scarface74 6y agoThe difference is that ad blockers traditionally intercepted your web requests to block ads meaning they had both network access and access to your browsing history. Content Blockers in Safari submit a list of rules to Safari and Safari blocks the requests. No third party has access to your browser history.
- saagarjha 6y agoNote that Safari has added new APIs to allow for a content blocker to regain access to such information if you so choose.
- scarface74 6y agoLink? Not that I don't believe you but I can't find any information
- saagarjha 6y agohttps://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/sfsafariextensionhandling/3238030-contentblocker https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/sfs...
- scarface74 6y agoDoes that let the extension intercept the browsing history or just allow the extension to get information about a page after the user pulls up the share sheet and chooses to send the page to the extension?
- saagarjha 6y agoAs I understand it, that delegate method is called whenever an extension rule matches something on the page.
- scarface74 6y agoThat would be amazingly slow to call an out of process function on each match when the page renders. Extensions run as a separate process. I would be amazed if Apple would allow something that inefficient as careful as it is about battery and memory efficiency.
- saagarjha 6y agoI mean, the Safari application is already doing XPC with the web content process constantly anyways. And perhaps they can batch these messages?
- scarface74 6y agoWhy would Safari be doing any communication with the content blockers? The content blockers are submitting JSON one time to iOS Safari and aren’t running at all.
- saagarjha 6y agoThe Safari App Extension is running in the background, which is presumably what the process is communicating with.
- scarface74 6y agoYou’re talking about MacOS and not iOS? As far I know, the only time Safari or any other app on iOS calls an extension is when the user chooses to “share” with that extension
- 6y ago
- snazz 6y agoThat's just macOS, not iOS, right?
- saagarjha 6y agoI believe so.