7 ms·

At this stage of uBlock Origin, is there actually any point of using other extensions of you’re just a regular Joe “browsing the web”?

by gnuj3 4y ago

Grimburger 4y ago
I like decentraleyes > Protects you against tracking through "free", centralized, content delivery. https://decentraleyes.org/ https://decentraleyes.org/
- toastal 4y ago
  It's basically unmaintained and CDNs for this style of are not useful anymore... https://httptoolkit.tech/blog/public-cdn-risks/ https://httptoolkit.tech/blog/public-cdn-risks/
  - divarre 4y ago
    Genuine question, how is it unmaintained? It was last updated 4 months ago: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes... https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes Is it not still relevant as long as all sites don't choose to host their own dependencies, as recommended in the article you linked?
    - toastal 4y ago
      The libs need to be manually maintained. Literally the first one I looked at, jQuery (https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes/-/tree/master/resources/jquery https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes/-/tree/master/res...), and we can take a look over at NPM (https://www.npmjs.com/package/jquery https://www.npmjs.com/package/jquery) and see the latest version, 3.6.0, was released on 2021-03-02 and is still not shipped with Decentraleyes. This add-on shaped the privacy-positive landscape for browsers upon it's release, but the features have be made obsolete with the latest browser isolation and that most entities have migrated to bundled JavaScript and off of CDNs.
      - divarre 4y ago
        Thanks for the clarification!
- jan__j 4y ago
  LocalCDN is an actually maintained fork of this. https://www.localcdn.org/ https://www.localcdn.org/
  - SquareWheel 4y ago
    I like the idea of LocalCDN not necessarily for privacy reasons, but for performance. Now that shared browser caches are a thing of the past, it feels incredibly wasteful how often we have to download common libraries and fonts. I'd like to keep 500MB or so of data locally and just have it replace the network requests when they're made. I'd be curious how much data that might end up saving after a month or year of browsing.
    - its_bbq 4y ago
      Sounds like you could be fingerprinted by what's in your cache
      - SquareWheel 4y ago
        Only that I have an extension installed. Presumably the libraries cached would be the same for all users. So assuming an install base of >10,000, I'm not particularly bothered about it. I'm more interested in techniques for faster page loading.
  - Grimburger 4y ago
    Thankyou, I will check this out.
rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago
Cookie-AutoDelete. Click it to whitelist a website so that its cookies and local data aren't deleted. Why would I allow all websites I visit to store things on your computer? I have about 20~ domains whitelisted (which I've added and maintained over years). The rest will be forced to forget me and not be allowed to create profiles and sell my interests and habits to the highest bidder. Works great with Firefox Multi-Account Containers: this lets me be stayed logged into an account (eg Google) but only for a subset of services (Google Drive, Gmail) – not Google Search: why would I want Google to keep an history of my queries? Works great with https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu (I really don't care about them since they're auto deleted anyway). I wish uBlock, Cookie Auto Delete and I don't care about cookies would be installed by default with Firefox.
- 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
  i have made it a habit to use firefox in private browsing mode all the time. i know i can use "private browsing.autostart", i was a big user of that for many many years but ineed some persistent logins. private browsing i do as in, i start my pc, firefox starts on its own so i do ctrl+shift+p. then i go about my day using this window and more such windows. whenever i have to wind down for the day or want to get rid of a session, i just close the windows and i am clean. i understand people use cookies auto delete like you mentioned but for my use case, i dont even bother. i can sign in, do what i need to do and i dont care about signing out or even being tracked across sessions because sessions are not persistent across logins
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago
    I enabled TOTP on 23 websites, so it would be annoying to log in and enter a temporary code every time I need to access my account there.
    - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
      sure... i get that.... its not for everyone. you can do one thing, keep one browser window for websites that you absolutely need to be logged in to always. for general browsing/surfing, etc, use the private window. for example, this means you arent logged in to youtube or google search while you go about your day while you can still use gmail in a container.... the normal not-container browsing needs cookie removal and stuff
worble 4y ago
Maybe not for just "regular joe" but Arkenfox maintains a good list of extensions to use for privacy, and more importantly, which ones really don't add that much with recent Firefox updates: https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions
ghostwords 4y ago
Hi, Privacy Badger dev here. While there is likely to be overlap between the various advertising/tracker lists and Privacy Badger, regardless of whether you enable learning locally, Privacy Badger can automatically discover new trackers that list-based blockers don’t know about. Besides automatic tracker blocking, Privacy Badger comes with privacy features like click-to-activate replacements for potentially useful trackers (video players, comments sections like Disqus, etc.), and link cleaning on Facebook and Google. Privacy Badger is also a political tool. By using Privacy Badger, you support the Electronic Frontier Foundation [1]. Privacy Badger sends the Global Privacy Control [2] signal to opt you out of data sharing and selling, and the Do Not Track [3] signal to tell companies not to track you. If trackers ignore your wishes, Privacy Badger will learn to block them. The idea isn't to block all advertising but rather to promote a better Web. [1] https://www.eff.org/ https://www.eff.org/ [2] https://globalprivacycontrol.org/ https://globalprivacycontrol.org/ [3] https://www.eff.org/issues/do-not-track https://www.eff.org/issues/do-not-track
- sky-kedge0749 4y ago
  Thanks for your work. Has there been any study as to how closely Privacy Badger converges to list-based blockers like uBlock Origin given enough time? Is that at all a metric you use in development?
  - ghostwords 4y ago
    Definitely, we have been working on generating insights from comparisons to other content blockers as part of Badger Sett scans. There are a few academic studies that note that algorithmic and manual approaches to tracker blocking tend to compliment each other, for example: https://kevin.borgolte.me/files/pdf/www2020-privacy-extensions.pdf https://kevin.borgolte.me/files/pdf/www2020-privacy-extensio...
    - sky-kedge0749 4y ago
      Thanks! Do any significant disadvantages of Privacy Badger stand out to you, contrasted with uBlock Origin? The biggest problem I can think of is that uBlock Origin will immediately prevent me from loading content that could be dangerous, while Privacy Badger has to visit dangerous content enough times to learn to block it, which is less good for security. On the other hand the big advantage to me for Privacy Badger is that it doesn't depend on manually-curated lists. uBlock Origin nicely wraps the block lists but when it comes down to it you are giving control over your browsing experience to the random volunteers building these lists, which, who knows? Though I'm not accusing anyone of anything.

At this stage of uBlock Origin, is there actually any point of using other extensions of you’re just a regular Joe “browsing the web”?

by gnuj3 4y ago

At this stage of uBlock Origin, is there actually any point of using other extensions of you’re just a regular Joe “browsing the web”?

Grimburger 4y ago

I like decentraleyes > Protects you against tracking through "free", centralized, content delivery. https://decentraleyes.org/ https://decentraleyes.org/

toastal 4y ago
It's basically unmaintained and CDNs for this style of are not useful anymore... https://httptoolkit.tech/blog/public-cdn-risks/ https://httptoolkit.tech/blog/public-cdn-risks/
- divarre 4y ago
  Genuine question, how is it unmaintained? It was last updated 4 months ago: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/decentraleyes... https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes Is it not still relevant as long as all sites don't choose to host their own dependencies, as recommended in the article you linked?
  - toastal 4y ago
    The libs need to be manually maintained. Literally the first one I looked at, jQuery (https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes/-/tree/master/resources/jquery https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes/-/tree/master/res...), and we can take a look over at NPM (https://www.npmjs.com/package/jquery https://www.npmjs.com/package/jquery) and see the latest version, 3.6.0, was released on 2021-03-02 and is still not shipped with Decentraleyes. This add-on shaped the privacy-positive landscape for browsers upon it's release, but the features have be made obsolete with the latest browser isolation and that most entities have migrated to bundled JavaScript and off of CDNs.
    - divarre 4y ago
      Thanks for the clarification!
jan__j 4y ago
LocalCDN is an actually maintained fork of this. https://www.localcdn.org/ https://www.localcdn.org/
- SquareWheel 4y ago
  I like the idea of LocalCDN not necessarily for privacy reasons, but for performance. Now that shared browser caches are a thing of the past, it feels incredibly wasteful how often we have to download common libraries and fonts. I'd like to keep 500MB or so of data locally and just have it replace the network requests when they're made. I'd be curious how much data that might end up saving after a month or year of browsing.
  - its_bbq 4y ago
    Sounds like you could be fingerprinted by what's in your cache
    - SquareWheel 4y ago
      Only that I have an extension installed. Presumably the libraries cached would be the same for all users. So assuming an install base of >10,000, I'm not particularly bothered about it. I'm more interested in techniques for faster page loading.
- Grimburger 4y ago
  Thankyou, I will check this out.

rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago

Cookie-AutoDelete. Click it to whitelist a website so that its cookies and local data aren't deleted. Why would I allow all websites I visit to store things on your computer? I have about 20~ domains whitelisted (which I've added and maintained over years). The rest will be forced to forget me and not be allowed to create profiles and sell my interests and habits to the highest bidder. Works great with Firefox Multi-Account Containers: this lets me be stayed logged into an account (eg Google) but only for a subset of services (Google Drive, Gmail) – not Google Search: why would I want Google to keep an history of my queries? Works great with https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu (I really don't care about them since they're auto deleted anyway). I wish uBlock, Cookie Auto Delete and I don't care about cookies would be installed by default with Firefox.

2Gkashmiri 4y ago
i have made it a habit to use firefox in private browsing mode all the time. i know i can use "private browsing.autostart", i was a big user of that for many many years but ineed some persistent logins. private browsing i do as in, i start my pc, firefox starts on its own so i do ctrl+shift+p. then i go about my day using this window and more such windows. whenever i have to wind down for the day or want to get rid of a session, i just close the windows and i am clean. i understand people use cookies auto delete like you mentioned but for my use case, i dont even bother. i can sign in, do what i need to do and i dont care about signing out or even being tracked across sessions because sessions are not persistent across logins
- rcMgD2BwE72F 4y ago
  I enabled TOTP on 23 websites, so it would be annoying to log in and enter a temporary code every time I need to access my account there.
  - 2Gkashmiri 4y ago
    sure... i get that.... its not for everyone. you can do one thing, keep one browser window for websites that you absolutely need to be logged in to always. for general browsing/surfing, etc, use the private window. for example, this means you arent logged in to youtube or google search while you go about your day while you can still use gmail in a container.... the normal not-container browsing needs cookie removal and stuff

worble 4y ago

Maybe not for just "regular joe" but Arkenfox maintains a good list of extensions to use for privacy, and more importantly, which ones really don't add that much with recent Firefox updates: https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions

ghostwords 4y ago

Hi, Privacy Badger dev here. While there is likely to be overlap between the various advertising/tracker lists and Privacy Badger, regardless of whether you enable learning locally, Privacy Badger can automatically discover new trackers that list-based blockers don’t know about. Besides automatic tracker blocking, Privacy Badger comes with privacy features like click-to-activate replacements for potentially useful trackers (video players, comments sections like Disqus, etc.), and link cleaning on Facebook and Google. Privacy Badger is also a political tool. By using Privacy Badger, you support the Electronic Frontier Foundation [1]. Privacy Badger sends the Global Privacy Control [2] signal to opt you out of data sharing and selling, and the Do Not Track [3] signal to tell companies not to track you. If trackers ignore your wishes, Privacy Badger will learn to block them. The idea isn't to block all advertising but rather to promote a better Web. [1] https://www.eff.org/ https://www.eff.org/ [2] https://globalprivacycontrol.org/ https://globalprivacycontrol.org/ [3] https://www.eff.org/issues/do-not-track https://www.eff.org/issues/do-not-track

sky-kedge0749 4y ago
Thanks for your work. Has there been any study as to how closely Privacy Badger converges to list-based blockers like uBlock Origin given enough time? Is that at all a metric you use in development?
- ghostwords 4y ago
  Definitely, we have been working on generating insights from comparisons to other content blockers as part of Badger Sett scans. There are a few academic studies that note that algorithmic and manual approaches to tracker blocking tend to compliment each other, for example: https://kevin.borgolte.me/files/pdf/www2020-privacy-extensions.pdf https://kevin.borgolte.me/files/pdf/www2020-privacy-extensio...
  - sky-kedge0749 4y ago
    Thanks! Do any significant disadvantages of Privacy Badger stand out to you, contrasted with uBlock Origin? The biggest problem I can think of is that uBlock Origin will immediately prevent me from loading content that could be dangerous, while Privacy Badger has to visit dangerous content enough times to learn to block it, which is less good for security. On the other hand the big advantage to me for Privacy Badger is that it doesn't depend on manually-curated lists. uBlock Origin nicely wraps the block lists but when it comes down to it you are giving control over your browsing experience to the random volunteers building these lists, which, who knows? Though I'm not accusing anyone of anything.