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I installed adblock many years ago and loved it. Then I got a new machine and had to reinstall it. For the first time I had a look at those permissions. Insani

I installed adblock many years ago and loved it. Then I got a new machine and had to reinstall it. For the first time I had a look at those permissions. Insanity. It's only logical that it should be able to see what I see to block the ads, but I never stopped to think about that. Now I have a pihole and zero extensions.

ralphist 3y ago
Safari has a special interface for content blockers to work without any permissions. They provide blocklists and the browser does the blocking itself. [1] Don't know if that's an option in Firefox. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/creating_a_content_blocker/ https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/cre...
- Scion9066 3y ago
  Yep, Firefox and Chrome have declarativeNetRequest: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/declarativeNetRequest https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web... Ublock Origin Lite uses it for example. (It's also the thing everyone is angry at Chrome for as their 'plan to kill ad blockers' by replacing the current blocking APIs with declarativeNetRequest.)
  - danShumway 3y ago
    This is kind of an important point with Manifest V3: having more permission options is a good thing. It's good that declarativeNetRequest exists. Active Tab permissions are cool, I love being able to scope extensions to specific domains. Non-persistent background pages are a nice performance/security feature. The only problem with Manifest V3 is that Google is shutting down everything else and removing other APIs. Safari's extension model kind of goes in its own direction, but it's based on similar principles to Manifest V3 and my contention with it is the same -- it's not a problem that you can build a permission-less adblocker in Safari, that's good. It's a problem that you have to, because getting rid of those permissions makes adblockers slightly less effective, which may or may not be worth it for every user. I can say with relative certainty that there is no adblocker on Safari that is as powerful as uBlock Origin on Firefox. People bundle criticism of Chrome under the Manifest V3 label but aside from some more techy-type complaints around how Service Workers are being handled, in my experience at least a lot of Manifest V3 is really good. What's not good is that Chrome used Manifest V3 as an opportunity to get rid of a lot of other important APIs. So you don't see the same criticism levied at Mozilla because with Firefox you get most of the same benefits of Manifest V3 (and some additional benefits, Firefox's event-system is imo a better way to handle temporary background pages than Chrome's service-worker system) without the downsides of Chrome removing blocking web requests for the extensions that need them. I'm using Manifest V3 for private extensions that I maintain for myself on Firefox. Manifest V3 is great and I enjoy trying to cut down my permissions as much as I can even though I'm basically just running the code myself. But none of my private extensions would work in Chrome or Safari or would be portable to either browser; they lack the APIs that I need and don't have any realistic equivalents.
UberFly 3y ago
Which adblock extension are you referencing here? Ublock for instance uses local block lists.
demondemidi 3y ago
What do you do on mobile?
- FredPret 3y ago
  Three options: - make it the DNS for your wifi if your router can do that - set Pihole to be the DNS for individual devices in their wifi settings if it can't - create a personal VPN that uses Pihole as the DNS
  - demondemidi 3y ago
    So even on 5G you vpn back to your pihole? What’s the latency like?
    - efreak 3y ago
      The VPN can be configured to only send DNS requests (port 53). If necessary, you can also tunnel port 443 for requests to well-known DoH servers (though with a VPN going to the same local network as your DNS server, DoH seems unnecessary)
Scion9066 3y ago
That's one of the reasons behind the permission changes coming in Manifest V3: to reduce what extensions have access to in the first place. Some extensions may be open-source and trustworthy but there are many that aren't and people seem to have trouble vetting them.
danShumway 3y ago
Note that a Piihole will not be as effective at blocking ads and trackers as uBlock Origin will be. But it's good to have the option for people who want it, different people have different risk profiles and concerns.
- crtasm 3y ago
  As long as there's software/devices we can't run uBlock on, there's a reason to run both.

ralphist 3y ago

Safari has a special interface for content blockers to work without any permissions. They provide blocklists and the browser does the blocking itself. [1] Don't know if that's an option in Firefox. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/creating_a_content_blocker/ https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/cre...

Scion9066 3y ago
Yep, Firefox and Chrome have declarativeNetRequest: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API/declarativeNetRequest https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/Web... Ublock Origin Lite uses it for example. (It's also the thing everyone is angry at Chrome for as their 'plan to kill ad blockers' by replacing the current blocking APIs with declarativeNetRequest.)
- danShumway 3y ago
  This is kind of an important point with Manifest V3: having more permission options is a good thing. It's good that declarativeNetRequest exists. Active Tab permissions are cool, I love being able to scope extensions to specific domains. Non-persistent background pages are a nice performance/security feature. The only problem with Manifest V3 is that Google is shutting down everything else and removing other APIs. Safari's extension model kind of goes in its own direction, but it's based on similar principles to Manifest V3 and my contention with it is the same -- it's not a problem that you can build a permission-less adblocker in Safari, that's good. It's a problem that you have to, because getting rid of those permissions makes adblockers slightly less effective, which may or may not be worth it for every user. I can say with relative certainty that there is no adblocker on Safari that is as powerful as uBlock Origin on Firefox. People bundle criticism of Chrome under the Manifest V3 label but aside from some more techy-type complaints around how Service Workers are being handled, in my experience at least a lot of Manifest V3 is really good. What's not good is that Chrome used Manifest V3 as an opportunity to get rid of a lot of other important APIs. So you don't see the same criticism levied at Mozilla because with Firefox you get most of the same benefits of Manifest V3 (and some additional benefits, Firefox's event-system is imo a better way to handle temporary background pages than Chrome's service-worker system) without the downsides of Chrome removing blocking web requests for the extensions that need them. I'm using Manifest V3 for private extensions that I maintain for myself on Firefox. Manifest V3 is great and I enjoy trying to cut down my permissions as much as I can even though I'm basically just running the code myself. But none of my private extensions would work in Chrome or Safari or would be portable to either browser; they lack the APIs that I need and don't have any realistic equivalents.

UberFly 3y ago

Which adblock extension are you referencing here? Ublock for instance uses local block lists.

demondemidi 3y ago

What do you do on mobile?

FredPret 3y ago
Three options: - make it the DNS for your wifi if your router can do that - set Pihole to be the DNS for individual devices in their wifi settings if it can't - create a personal VPN that uses Pihole as the DNS
- demondemidi 3y ago
  So even on 5G you vpn back to your pihole? What’s the latency like?
  - efreak 3y ago
    The VPN can be configured to only send DNS requests (port 53). If necessary, you can also tunnel port 443 for requests to well-known DoH servers (though with a VPN going to the same local network as your DNS server, DoH seems unnecessary)

Scion9066 3y ago

That's one of the reasons behind the permission changes coming in Manifest V3: to reduce what extensions have access to in the first place. Some extensions may be open-source and trustworthy but there are many that aren't and people seem to have trouble vetting them.

danShumway 3y ago

Note that a Piihole will not be as effective at blocking ads and trackers as uBlock Origin will be. But it's good to have the option for people who want it, different people have different risk profiles and concerns.

crtasm 3y ago
As long as there's software/devices we can't run uBlock on, there's a reason to run both.