8 ms·

Disconnect: open source extension makes the web more private, secure, faster

117 points by caiobegotti 13y ago

aareet 13y ago
How is this different from Ghostery? (https://www.ghostery.com/ https://www.ghostery.com/)
- joshschreuder 13y ago
  I use Ghostery, but I believe it has been chided in the past for its 'GhostRank' feature (which, to their credit, isn't on by default). This is anonymous usage tracking of the trackers encountered which is sold to businesses to "help them market to consumers more transparently, better manage their web properties and comply with privacy standards." I would like to see more of a comparison of 'effectiveness' of both extensions though, if such a thing were possible.
  - quadrangle 13y ago
    The other issue with Ghostery is that it doesn't block by default and you even need to go to advanced settings to tell it to block new trackers by default.
    - ToastyMallows 13y ago
      OK so after you turn off GhostRank and block all new trackers by default, how is it different?
lotharbot 13y ago
I'd love to see an Android version of this.
- byoogle 13y ago
  Dev here. We do have a new Android app out (but focused on search rather than browsing privacy): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.disconnect.search https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.disconnect....
thomasfromcdnjs 13y ago
As these become more popular we shall see a return to server analytics. Time to install AwStats...
- joosters 13y ago
  I wish more people used server analytics. Less privacy risk to the user, along with a faster and less congested internet connection...
  - userbinator 13y ago
    Agreed, I'm perfectly fine with the site I'm visiting collecting info like IP, user agent, etc. but not with the idea of some centralised entity doing it. (That's also what I do with my own site.)
rajbala 13y ago
I often find that Disconnect can be overly aggressive in the parts of a page that it blocks. When something is amiss when using a webpage whitelisting the site in Disconnect usually fixes the problem.
- nacs 13y ago
  This also happens with Ghostery and to a lesser extent, Adblock. I switched from Ghostery to Disconnect and have found Disconnect to be a little better at not breaking some sites. The worst sites I've ran into while using Ghostery/Disconnect are the ones that have a Google Analytics action tracking code in the middle of their Javascript methods (since the addons block GA) so the entire site/app fails to work. Developers need to start testing their sites with these addons more to make sure silly errors like that aren't done (some optional tracking request failing to complete shouldn't make an entire app fail).
  - devicenull 13y ago
    Wait developers should test extensions that make arbitrary changes to their javascript? That doesn't seem reasonable.
    - byoogle 13y ago
      I’m the developer of Disconnect and agree with you, but … To back up the op and gp, I’m seeing more and more sites that don’t degrade gracefully when their analytics service doesn’t load. I do think devs should check that their site still works when non-essential services fail to load because, even when the user isn’t running Disconnect or a similar app, this scenario is bound to happen — e.g., when there’s a network issue somewhere.
      - rcsorensen 13y ago
        As the developer of Disconnect, if you're removing chunks of functionality the site developers expect to be there, you should be doing it in a way that doesn't break that functionality so absolutely. You could cloak the cookies so they're pageview specific. Or inject your own functions in place of the ones that are being blocked. Whether analytics is an essential service or not is a pretty up in the air question.
gregimba 13y ago
This is just going to be another arms race.
- kiba 13y ago
  It's only an arm race if a lot of people uses it and it becomes a problem to business owners.
  - gregimba 13y ago
    I was mainly referencing the privacy vs data collection arms race. In this case I don't think anyone is going to be severely affected by this.
  - Schlaefer 13y ago
    Sad truth is: all these "privacy" plugins break ads. Many people install them for that purpose alone and use privacy as excuse. Even if a website provide local ads because it values the privacy of its users: those are blocked too. From a website owner's perspective privacy plugins are ad-blockers.
    - jarofgreen 13y ago
      They only break ads if ads are big JS things that have privacy implications - most ads are, but they don't have to be. I run a website that has one sponsor and their ads aren't blocked by privacy tools - because it's just some static HTML text, link and an image on the page. So I'm not sure what "local ads" you are referring to. (In much the same way, I don't see a whole bunch of ads because I use a Flashblocker ... but ads don't have to be flash) > From a website owner's perspective privacy plugins are ad-blockers. If that's how a website owner thinks, then I'd say they have a very narrow idea of what an ad can be.
      - Schlaefer 13y ago
        Small businesses don't reinvent ads or analytics, they rotate banners and that's it. They also don't implement their own software but use third party tools/plugins to manage their ads. Ghosterly and Co blocks those common third party solutions even when run locally. E.g. from the Ghostery source: "type":"analytics", … "pattern":"\\/piwik\\.(js|php)", or "type":"ad", … "pattern":"\\/adpeeps\\.php",
userbinator 13y ago
From https://disconnect.me/disconnect https://disconnect.me/disconnect : Common tracking sites – Facebook, Google, and Twitter – are shown separately to make them easy to block or unblock. Click any icon to block or unblock a site. ... Click the Facebook or Twitter icons to share these stats with your friends. Anyone else find that rather ironic?
- Mindless2112 13y ago
  Not really. The point isn't that those sites are evil, it's that tracking is evil.
byoogle 13y ago
The source is at: https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect
- jzelinskie 13y ago
  I recently tried to switch from Ghostery to Disconnect. It was basically a wash in terms of frequency of broken pages. However two things did bother me a little: - The default settings had Disconnect fighting with HTTPS Everywhere and caused resource contention in Chrome. Please follow the Unix philosophy and just recommend users install HTTPS Everywhere instead of having a naive implementation embedded in your unrelated product. - It was unintuitive that the number incremented on the button is the total number of requests and not the number of requests blocked. I look forward to the days that these types of extensions work well enough that I can install them on my parents computers and not have to worry about pages being broken, but them still having their privacy. Keep up the good work.
  - datashaman 13y ago
    When you say 'it was basically a wash', it is not clear what you mean. Which one breaks more pages?
    - josephlord 13y ago
      I think it means that there is no clear winner, they both break about the same number of pages.
    - pessimizer 13y ago
      I didn't think that this would be so hard to find: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/wash http://www.thefreedictionary.com/wash n. 13. Informal An activity, action, or enterprise that yields neither marked gain nor marked loss: "[The company] doesn't do badly. That is, it's a wash" (Harper's).
      - datashaman 13y ago
JosephBrown 13y ago
I've been using Abine's DoNotTrackMe for a while. Is this any different/better?
- touristtam 13y ago
  I am wondering as well. Using https://github.com/RequestPolicy/requestpolicy https://github.com/RequestPolicy/requestpolicy on Firefox as a more aggressive way to control which website request can get through.
venatiodecorus 13y ago
This has been available for a while, curious why it's making HN now?
paracyst 13y ago
I have long since switched to Ghostery ever since Disconnect frequently broke YouTube videos and nothing was ever done to fix it. Does anyone know if this problem still persists?
- mountaineer 13y ago
  hmm, been using Disconnect for a while in FF and Chrome, haven't noticed any issues with YouTube videos.
  - ctrijueque 13y ago
    Same here. Chromium on Fedora without any issues.
donniezazen 13y ago
It's the dots that you leave around the internet that is the biggest problem in personal privacy.
ams6110 13y ago
You can achive a lot of this without using any browser extensions by simply using a hosts file such as the one at http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm (that one is Windows-oriented but it works fine in linux also). Or you could run your own dns but that's a bit more complicated to set up.
- vxNsr 13y ago
  Have you noticed how this affects websites/apps breaking? meaning, certain websites won't play video unless an add plays first (hulu/comedy central sometimes) do those sites not work if you enable this?
  - touristtam 13y ago
    <irony>oh no! not hulu .... wait I can't use that US centrict service anyway</irony> :p Thanks for pointing this out though. ;)
  - mih 13y ago
    Some sites don't work unless I turn off hosts. On MS-Windows I simply use this to toggle hosts file on and off in such cases - http://www.abelhadigital.com/hostsman http://www.abelhadigital.com/hostsman
- allendoerfer 13y ago
  I like the clean approach, but hesitate to use my hosts file for blocking unwanted stuff on my development machine. It is 3:00 am the app breaks in production while the development version magically works. You question your ability as a developer and a human being in general while blaming your browser, your os, your DNS secretly knowing in the back of your head, that that you must have done something really, really stupid. Why could you not have waited until tomorrow to push? Finally the mixed feeling of relief and thinking you are the dumbest person in the world, when you remember your hosts file while hacking over SSH on production files, which you totally should have considered instantaneously. I remember reading a story, where the legal department of a company in Germany sent hundreds of cease-and-desist orders to websites, which where all displaying their images. Strangely the image just appeared on company computers …
euank 13y ago
Though it's not advertised on the landing page, Lightbeam has a block functionality: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/lightbeam/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/lightbeam/ It's also endorsed by mozilla, which makes me trust it more. I've been using it for a while (on top of noscript) and it's quite informative and seems to work well. My personal setup is noscript with careful whitelisting which I've found to effectively disable most tracking.
- sheetjs 13y ago
  > It's also endorsed by mozilla, which makes me trust it more. Somewhat skeptical, given that Mozilla referred to in-browser ads as "user-enhancing": https://twitter.com/dherman76/status/433320156496789504 https://twitter.com/dherman76/status/433320156496789504 https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publisher-transformation-with-users-at-the-center/ https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publish...
  - Spittie 13y ago
    Mockup of the ads: https://bug972916.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=8376547 https://bug972916.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=837... In this case I think Mozilla is right, many users will be happy to have a quick facebook/amazon/twitter/ebay shortcut out of the box.
- quadrangle 13y ago
  People shouldn't use something with "block functionality". To protect our freedoms, we need everyone using stuff that defaults to blocking the surveillance.
znowi 13y ago
I like Ghostery better. It breaks less websites for me and provides more data on each particular tracker with a source link and a description for the company behind it. Disconnect just shows a title with a number. It has a nicer and more functional UI. I like a popup on page load where you can instantly see what is blocked and what isn't. There's an option to "run once" a blocked widget on page, which can be handy.
- zizee 13y ago
  http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516156/a-popular-ad-blocker-also-helps-the-ad-industry/ http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516156/a-popular-ad-blo... From the article: A Popular Ad Blocker Also Helps the Ad Industry Millions of people use the tool Ghostery to block online tracking technology—some may not realize that it feeds data to the ad industry. It's good to have alternatives, and I prefer Disconnect as Ghostery's motivations seem a little clouded.
  - Aoyagi 13y ago
    Whenever someone talks about Ghostery, this is, of course, brought up. However, what isn't brought up that providing this data (GhostRank) is voluntary and I think it's disabled by default (but user is asked during the first time setup).
    - eps 13y ago
      Whenever someone says that Ghostery own tracking is optional, one, of course, glances over a huge inherent conflict of interest behind Ghostery. They make an anti-tracking product and they takes money from advertisers. That's their life blood, they need to track you, that's how they survive and it puts them in a very precarious situation. So trusting them to value your interests over their own is naive at best. If you are comfortable with the risk and the trade-off, good for you, but dismissing this as a non-issue is disingenious.
      - aroch 13y ago
        but dismissing this as a non-issue is disingenious. It is a non-issue if you have to opt in. Also, they make money off of GhostRank data by 'consulting' on how to better present ads to encourage selective turn-off of adblocker
jmspring 13y ago
Given the lack of plugins on ios and sand boxing, how does this help ios apps per the disclaimer on the site linked to? (Currently browsing on my iPhone, so searching a bit tedious)
urza 13y ago
I am using StartPage https://startpage.com/ https://startpage.com/ as my search engine and am very happy with it. They essentially redirect your search query to google and return you the result. But they don't collect your IP nor anything else. https://startpage.com/eng/protect-privacy.html https://startpage.com/eng/protect-privacy.html
- antihero 13y ago
  Neat, and idea id there is there something like this that retains Google's handy features and also doesn't look like something from the nineties?
jkh123 13y ago
Using disconnect's proxy? Looks like a trap to me. Give me proof, you discard all the data, then we are talking. Otherwise this approach is mostly flawed.
goombastic 13y ago
Can anyone here point me in the direction of a hosts file that lists all the spammy sites? If it's a DNS, the better.
- fishy929 13y ago
  http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/ http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/
Loic 13y ago
My browser is always started in incognito mode, I open Firefox to do something in an authenticated way (posting something on HN, accessing my bank account, etc.) but normally, Firefox is always closed. $ cat /usr/share/applications/chromium-browser-incognito.desktop [Desktop Entry] Version=1.0 Name=Chromium Incognito Web Browser GenericName=Incognito Web Browser Comment=Access the Internet Exec=/usr/bin/chromium-browser --incognito %U Terminal=false X-MultipleArgs=false Type=Application Icon=chromium-browser Categories=Network;WebBrowser; MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml_xml;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https; StartupWMClass=Chromium-browser StartupNotify=true X-Ayatana-Desktop-Shortcuts=NewWindow;Incognito;TempProfile [NewWindow Shortcut Group] Name=Open a New Window Exec=/usr/bin/chromium-browser --incognito TargetEnvironment=Unity [Incognito Shortcut Group] Name=Open a New Window in incognito mode Exec=/usr/bin/chromium-browser --incognito TargetEnvironment=Unity [TempProfile Shortcut Group] Name=Open a New Window with a temporary profile Exec=/usr/bin/chromium-browser --temp-profile TargetEnvironment=Unity I think this idea is coming from Ian Bicking[0], but I can't find the reference any more and it has been years I am doing this. [0]: http://www.ianbicking.org/blog/ http://www.ianbicking.org/blog/
abc3 13y ago
Has anyone seen a guide that discusses which browser settings and plugins complement one another? Or which ones to use in different scenarios, e.g., I know what I'm doing, I don't mind if things break on occasion, and I'm willing to spend a lot of time training my plugins (so NoScript and/or RequestPolicy would be recommended) vs. I'm setting up a computer for my parents who aren't tech savvy (so maybe Disconnect or Ghostery, plus....?). This comes up a fair amount on Hacker News and in http://www.reddit.com/r/Privacy http://www.reddit.com/r/Privacy and I've seen plenty of posts and guides like https://prism-break.org/en/ https://prism-break.org/en/ and http://www.logicalincrements.com/firefox/ http://www.logicalincrements.com/firefox/ that just list a bunch of plugins. What I'm looking for is a set of use cases.
teamonkey 13y ago
Can someone explain what this is? The front page tells me nothing and I can't watch the video right now. I wish this trend of using videos instead of text would end soon.
- walshie4 13y ago
  There are two plugins they currently offer. One blocks sites from tracking you, while the other allows you to search using your favorite search engine with added security (no ip logging, more anonymity, etc.). For more information checkout the Github project page for each project below. https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect https://github.com/disconnectme/search https://github.com/disconnectme/search
pessimizer 13y ago
I love the combination of Ghostery and Cookie Monster. For Ghostery, I make sure that new trackers added to the list are automatically blocked, and disable its cookie blocking. With Cookie Monster, I block all cookies by default, only whitelisting the sites that I wish to maintain being logged into (primarily the sites I run.) With Cookie Monster you get the two-click ability to temporarily allow cookies from a particular website, and the two-click ability to revoke all sites previously allowed temporarily. Being able to quickly manage the individual cookies set for a particular site (again two clicks) is also great. Ghostery, Cookie Monster, Tree-Style Tabs and Download Statusbar are the four things that I install on a browser the first time I use it. I add HTTPS Everywhere, User Agent Switcher and Video DownloadHelper if I'm going to use it for more than a few hours. That's the combination of plugins that renders me unable to switch from Firefox:) edit: I don't know how I forgot the Resurrect Pages plugin. edit2: Crap, I forgot Flashblock. I might be hopelessly embedded in a Firefox workflow.

117 points by caiobegotti 13y ago

aareet 13y ago

How is this different from Ghostery? (https://www.ghostery.com/ https://www.ghostery.com/)

joshschreuder 13y ago
I use Ghostery, but I believe it has been chided in the past for its 'GhostRank' feature (which, to their credit, isn't on by default). This is anonymous usage tracking of the trackers encountered which is sold to businesses to "help them market to consumers more transparently, better manage their web properties and comply with privacy standards." I would like to see more of a comparison of 'effectiveness' of both extensions though, if such a thing were possible.
- quadrangle 13y ago
  The other issue with Ghostery is that it doesn't block by default and you even need to go to advanced settings to tell it to block new trackers by default.
  - ToastyMallows 13y ago
    OK so after you turn off GhostRank and block all new trackers by default, how is it different?

lotharbot 13y ago

I'd love to see an Android version of this.

byoogle 13y ago
Dev here. We do have a new Android app out (but focused on search rather than browsing privacy): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.disconnect.search https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.disconnect....

thomasfromcdnjs 13y ago

As these become more popular we shall see a return to server analytics. Time to install AwStats...

joosters 13y ago
I wish more people used server analytics. Less privacy risk to the user, along with a faster and less congested internet connection...
- userbinator 13y ago
  Agreed, I'm perfectly fine with the site I'm visiting collecting info like IP, user agent, etc. but not with the idea of some centralised entity doing it. (That's also what I do with my own site.)

rajbala 13y ago

I often find that Disconnect can be overly aggressive in the parts of a page that it blocks. When something is amiss when using a webpage whitelisting the site in Disconnect usually fixes the problem.

nacs 13y ago
This also happens with Ghostery and to a lesser extent, Adblock. I switched from Ghostery to Disconnect and have found Disconnect to be a little better at not breaking some sites. The worst sites I've ran into while using Ghostery/Disconnect are the ones that have a Google Analytics action tracking code in the middle of their Javascript methods (since the addons block GA) so the entire site/app fails to work. Developers need to start testing their sites with these addons more to make sure silly errors like that aren't done (some optional tracking request failing to complete shouldn't make an entire app fail).
- devicenull 13y ago
  Wait developers should test extensions that make arbitrary changes to their javascript? That doesn't seem reasonable.
  - byoogle 13y ago
    I’m the developer of Disconnect and agree with you, but … To back up the op and gp, I’m seeing more and more sites that don’t degrade gracefully when their analytics service doesn’t load. I do think devs should check that their site still works when non-essential services fail to load because, even when the user isn’t running Disconnect or a similar app, this scenario is bound to happen — e.g., when there’s a network issue somewhere.
    - rcsorensen 13y ago
      As the developer of Disconnect, if you're removing chunks of functionality the site developers expect to be there, you should be doing it in a way that doesn't break that functionality so absolutely. You could cloak the cookies so they're pageview specific. Or inject your own functions in place of the ones that are being blocked. Whether analytics is an essential service or not is a pretty up in the air question.

gregimba 13y ago

This is just going to be another arms race.

kiba 13y ago
It's only an arm race if a lot of people uses it and it becomes a problem to business owners.
- gregimba 13y ago
  I was mainly referencing the privacy vs data collection arms race. In this case I don't think anyone is going to be severely affected by this.
- Schlaefer 13y ago
  Sad truth is: all these "privacy" plugins break ads. Many people install them for that purpose alone and use privacy as excuse. Even if a website provide local ads because it values the privacy of its users: those are blocked too. From a website owner's perspective privacy plugins are ad-blockers.
  - jarofgreen 13y ago
    They only break ads if ads are big JS things that have privacy implications - most ads are, but they don't have to be. I run a website that has one sponsor and their ads aren't blocked by privacy tools - because it's just some static HTML text, link and an image on the page. So I'm not sure what "local ads" you are referring to. (In much the same way, I don't see a whole bunch of ads because I use a Flashblocker ... but ads don't have to be flash) > From a website owner's perspective privacy plugins are ad-blockers. If that's how a website owner thinks, then I'd say they have a very narrow idea of what an ad can be.
    - Schlaefer 13y ago
      Small businesses don't reinvent ads or analytics, they rotate banners and that's it. They also don't implement their own software but use third party tools/plugins to manage their ads. Ghosterly and Co blocks those common third party solutions even when run locally. E.g. from the Ghostery source: "type":"analytics", … "pattern":"\\/piwik\\.(js|php)", or "type":"ad", … "pattern":"\\/adpeeps\\.php",

userbinator 13y ago

From https://disconnect.me/disconnect https://disconnect.me/disconnect : Common tracking sites – Facebook, Google, and Twitter – are shown separately to make them easy to block or unblock. Click any icon to block or unblock a site. ... Click the Facebook or Twitter icons to share these stats with your friends. Anyone else find that rather ironic?

Mindless2112 13y ago
Not really. The point isn't that those sites are evil, it's that tracking is evil.

byoogle 13y ago

The source is at: https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect

jzelinskie 13y ago
I recently tried to switch from Ghostery to Disconnect. It was basically a wash in terms of frequency of broken pages. However two things did bother me a little: - The default settings had Disconnect fighting with HTTPS Everywhere and caused resource contention in Chrome. Please follow the Unix philosophy and just recommend users install HTTPS Everywhere instead of having a naive implementation embedded in your unrelated product. - It was unintuitive that the number incremented on the button is the total number of requests and not the number of requests blocked. I look forward to the days that these types of extensions work well enough that I can install them on my parents computers and not have to worry about pages being broken, but them still having their privacy. Keep up the good work.
- datashaman 13y ago
  When you say 'it was basically a wash', it is not clear what you mean. Which one breaks more pages?
  - josephlord 13y ago
    I think it means that there is no clear winner, they both break about the same number of pages.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    I didn't think that this would be so hard to find: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/wash http://www.thefreedictionary.com/wash n. 13. Informal An activity, action, or enterprise that yields neither marked gain nor marked loss: "[The company] doesn't do badly. That is, it's a wash" (Harper's).
    - datashaman 13y ago

JosephBrown 13y ago

I've been using Abine's DoNotTrackMe for a while. Is this any different/better?

touristtam 13y ago
I am wondering as well. Using https://github.com/RequestPolicy/requestpolicy https://github.com/RequestPolicy/requestpolicy on Firefox as a more aggressive way to control which website request can get through.

venatiodecorus 13y ago

This has been available for a while, curious why it's making HN now?

paracyst 13y ago

I have long since switched to Ghostery ever since Disconnect frequently broke YouTube videos and nothing was ever done to fix it. Does anyone know if this problem still persists?

mountaineer 13y ago
hmm, been using Disconnect for a while in FF and Chrome, haven't noticed any issues with YouTube videos.
- ctrijueque 13y ago
  Same here. Chromium on Fedora without any issues.

donniezazen 13y ago

It's the dots that you leave around the internet that is the biggest problem in personal privacy.

ams6110 13y ago

You can achive a lot of this without using any browser extensions by simply using a hosts file such as the one at http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm (that one is Windows-oriented but it works fine in linux also). Or you could run your own dns but that's a bit more complicated to set up.

vxNsr 13y ago
Have you noticed how this affects websites/apps breaking? meaning, certain websites won't play video unless an add plays first (hulu/comedy central sometimes) do those sites not work if you enable this?
- touristtam 13y ago
  <irony>oh no! not hulu .... wait I can't use that US centrict service anyway</irony> :p Thanks for pointing this out though. ;)
- mih 13y ago
  Some sites don't work unless I turn off hosts. On MS-Windows I simply use this to toggle hosts file on and off in such cases - http://www.abelhadigital.com/hostsman http://www.abelhadigital.com/hostsman
allendoerfer 13y ago
I like the clean approach, but hesitate to use my hosts file for blocking unwanted stuff on my development machine. It is 3:00 am the app breaks in production while the development version magically works. You question your ability as a developer and a human being in general while blaming your browser, your os, your DNS secretly knowing in the back of your head, that that you must have done something really, really stupid. Why could you not have waited until tomorrow to push? Finally the mixed feeling of relief and thinking you are the dumbest person in the world, when you remember your hosts file while hacking over SSH on production files, which you totally should have considered instantaneously. I remember reading a story, where the legal department of a company in Germany sent hundreds of cease-and-desist orders to websites, which where all displaying their images. Strangely the image just appeared on company computers …

euank 13y ago

Though it's not advertised on the landing page, Lightbeam has a block functionality: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/lightbeam/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/lightbeam/ It's also endorsed by mozilla, which makes me trust it more. I've been using it for a while (on top of noscript) and it's quite informative and seems to work well. My personal setup is noscript with careful whitelisting which I've found to effectively disable most tracking.

sheetjs 13y ago
> It's also endorsed by mozilla, which makes me trust it more. Somewhat skeptical, given that Mozilla referred to in-browser ads as "user-enhancing": https://twitter.com/dherman76/status/433320156496789504 https://twitter.com/dherman76/status/433320156496789504 https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publisher-transformation-with-users-at-the-center/ https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publish...
- Spittie 13y ago
  Mockup of the ads: https://bug972916.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=8376547 https://bug972916.bugzilla.mozilla.org/attachment.cgi?id=837... In this case I think Mozilla is right, many users will be happy to have a quick facebook/amazon/twitter/ebay shortcut out of the box.
quadrangle 13y ago
People shouldn't use something with "block functionality". To protect our freedoms, we need everyone using stuff that defaults to blocking the surveillance.

znowi 13y ago

I like Ghostery better. It breaks less websites for me and provides more data on each particular tracker with a source link and a description for the company behind it. Disconnect just shows a title with a number. It has a nicer and more functional UI. I like a popup on page load where you can instantly see what is blocked and what isn't. There's an option to "run once" a blocked widget on page, which can be handy.

zizee 13y ago
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516156/a-popular-ad-blocker-also-helps-the-ad-industry/ http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516156/a-popular-ad-blo... From the article: A Popular Ad Blocker Also Helps the Ad Industry Millions of people use the tool Ghostery to block online tracking technology—some may not realize that it feeds data to the ad industry. It's good to have alternatives, and I prefer Disconnect as Ghostery's motivations seem a little clouded.
- Aoyagi 13y ago
  Whenever someone talks about Ghostery, this is, of course, brought up. However, what isn't brought up that providing this data (GhostRank) is voluntary and I think it's disabled by default (but user is asked during the first time setup).
  - eps 13y ago
    Whenever someone says that Ghostery own tracking is optional, one, of course, glances over a huge inherent conflict of interest behind Ghostery. They make an anti-tracking product and they takes money from advertisers. That's their life blood, they need to track you, that's how they survive and it puts them in a very precarious situation. So trusting them to value your interests over their own is naive at best. If you are comfortable with the risk and the trade-off, good for you, but dismissing this as a non-issue is disingenious.
    - aroch 13y ago
      but dismissing this as a non-issue is disingenious. It is a non-issue if you have to opt in. Also, they make money off of GhostRank data by 'consulting' on how to better present ads to encourage selective turn-off of adblocker

jmspring 13y ago

Given the lack of plugins on ios and sand boxing, how does this help ios apps per the disclaimer on the site linked to? (Currently browsing on my iPhone, so searching a bit tedious)

urza 13y ago

I am using StartPage https://startpage.com/ https://startpage.com/ as my search engine and am very happy with it. They essentially redirect your search query to google and return you the result. But they don't collect your IP nor anything else. https://startpage.com/eng/protect-privacy.html https://startpage.com/eng/protect-privacy.html

antihero 13y ago
Neat, and idea id there is there something like this that retains Google's handy features and also doesn't look like something from the nineties?

jkh123 13y ago

Using disconnect's proxy? Looks like a trap to me. Give me proof, you discard all the data, then we are talking. Otherwise this approach is mostly flawed.

goombastic 13y ago

Can anyone here point me in the direction of a hosts file that lists all the spammy sites? If it's a DNS, the better.

fishy929 13y ago
http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/ http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/

Loic 13y ago

My browser is always started in incognito mode, I open Firefox to do something in an authenticated way (posting something on HN, accessing my bank account, etc.) but normally, Firefox is always closed. $ cat /usr/share/applications/chromium-browser-incognito.desktop [Desktop Entry] Version=1.0 Name=Chromium Incognito Web Browser GenericName=Incognito Web Browser Comment=Access the Internet Exec=/usr/bin/chromium-browser --incognito %U Terminal=false X-MultipleArgs=false Type=Application Icon=chromium-browser Categories=Network;WebBrowser; MimeType=text/html;text/xml;application/xhtml_xml;x-scheme-handler/http;x-scheme-handler/https; StartupWMClass=Chromium-browser StartupNotify=true X-Ayatana-Desktop-Shortcuts=NewWindow;Incognito;TempProfile [NewWindow Shortcut Group] Name=Open a New Window Exec=/usr/bin/chromium-browser --incognito TargetEnvironment=Unity [Incognito Shortcut Group] Name=Open a New Window in incognito mode Exec=/usr/bin/chromium-browser --incognito TargetEnvironment=Unity [TempProfile Shortcut Group] Name=Open a New Window with a temporary profile Exec=/usr/bin/chromium-browser --temp-profile TargetEnvironment=Unity I think this idea is coming from Ian Bicking[0], but I can't find the reference any more and it has been years I am doing this. [0]: http://www.ianbicking.org/blog/ http://www.ianbicking.org/blog/

abc3 13y ago

Has anyone seen a guide that discusses which browser settings and plugins complement one another? Or which ones to use in different scenarios, e.g., I know what I'm doing, I don't mind if things break on occasion, and I'm willing to spend a lot of time training my plugins (so NoScript and/or RequestPolicy would be recommended) vs. I'm setting up a computer for my parents who aren't tech savvy (so maybe Disconnect or Ghostery, plus....?). This comes up a fair amount on Hacker News and in http://www.reddit.com/r/Privacy http://www.reddit.com/r/Privacy and I've seen plenty of posts and guides like https://prism-break.org/en/ https://prism-break.org/en/ and http://www.logicalincrements.com/firefox/ http://www.logicalincrements.com/firefox/ that just list a bunch of plugins. What I'm looking for is a set of use cases.

teamonkey 13y ago

Can someone explain what this is? The front page tells me nothing and I can't watch the video right now. I wish this trend of using videos instead of text would end soon.

walshie4 13y ago
There are two plugins they currently offer. One blocks sites from tracking you, while the other allows you to search using your favorite search engine with added security (no ip logging, more anonymity, etc.). For more information checkout the Github project page for each project below. https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect https://github.com/disconnectme/search https://github.com/disconnectme/search

pessimizer 13y ago

I love the combination of Ghostery and Cookie Monster. For Ghostery, I make sure that new trackers added to the list are automatically blocked, and disable its cookie blocking. With Cookie Monster, I block all cookies by default, only whitelisting the sites that I wish to maintain being logged into (primarily the sites I run.) With Cookie Monster you get the two-click ability to temporarily allow cookies from a particular website, and the two-click ability to revoke all sites previously allowed temporarily. Being able to quickly manage the individual cookies set for a particular site (again two clicks) is also great. Ghostery, Cookie Monster, Tree-Style Tabs and Download Statusbar are the four things that I install on a browser the first time I use it. I add HTTPS Everywhere, User Agent Switcher and Video DownloadHelper if I'm going to use it for more than a few hours. That's the combination of plugins that renders me unable to switch from Firefox:) edit: I don't know how I forgot the Resurrect Pages plugin. edit2: Crap, I forgot Flashblock. I might be hopelessly embedded in a Firefox workflow.