zlacker

>>taubek+(OP)
I recommend using an ad-blocker while visiting that site :-/

Lately, I find myself using more and more plugins to make the "modern web" tolerable. To list a few:

Channel Blocker (lets me block channels from search results on Youtube); uBlock Origin; Disconnect; F.B Purity; Consent-O-Matic (auto fill cookie consent forms); Kagi Search; PopUpOFF; Facebook Container; Privacy Badger; ClearURLs; Return YouTube Dislike

Basically, if I visit a website and don't like the experience, I either never go back (Kagi lets me exclude it from search results) or find a plugin to make it tolerable.

What I really want now is the ability to exclude entire websites from any permissions I grant to plugins. I feel like in the last year, I've read a couple stories about companies buying successful plugins and then using them to track you or show ads or whatever. I'm worried this will be the next stage in the battle for our attention -- best case: companies will buy popular plugins to track us and show us intrusive ads; worst case: nefarious actors will buy them to scrape information we think is private and collect it.

IE: I just want to be able to say "Hey, Firefox... those permissions that I granted to plugins x, y, and z? They don't apply to www.myfavoritebank.example.com"

Is there a browser that has that feature yet? I spent a few hours trying to figure out if Firefox did. It did not appear to.

edit: Added semicolons to separate plugins in list b/c HN stripped the newlines from my comment.

>>emacdo+hQ
A lot of your privacy related extensions are obsoleted by features in uBlock Origin.

Consent-O-Matic: use annoyances filter list PopUpOFF: sounds useless, use filter list Privacy Badger: sounds useless, use filter list ClearURLs: use url cleaning filter list

>>eNV25+VS
uBlock Origin URL filter lists don't work the same as ClearURLs. Privacy Badger is an extension by the EFF. It blocks cookies, that's it. The other one I don't know, but you should stop being condescending when teaching people about things you don't know about. Using uBlock Origin only might be a good option for some cases, but it's not a silver bullet.

For reference, ClearURLs can bypass redirects, has etags protection, both features which uBlock origin does not have (or at least didn't have last time I checked). Privacy Badger removes outgoing link tracking by Facebook and Google, has custom well-tested lists to block cookies or blocking third-party without blocking them entirely when necessary/useful. It also has quite a few smart learning features (not the ones Google tells are "fingerprinting" you) such as blocking canvas-based fingerprinting on the go.

uBlock Origin is awesome. The default blocking lists are great. The other ones provided with the extension are even better. But it's not a magic silver bullet. What you're going to use really depends on what you want out of your browsing experience, what your threat model is, etc.

>>doodle+CU
Original commenter is right about the feature obsolescence and didn't seem condescending to me. Just more or less critical of the general idea, as one doesn't really need so many extensions for privacy, which most of the list appeared to be tackling.

That said, URL filtering isn't necessarily effective at keeping your behavior private either. There's an argument to be made about ClearURLs and URL filtering in general being counter intuitive, as you might stick out among a sea of other users with marketing params in their URLs.

Still wishing for a Tor-like solution to anonymizing all users on a browser configuration level.

>>Ginsen+xZ

   > Original commenter is right about the feature obsolescence and didn't seem condescending to me

Maybe it wasn't, intention and tone are really hard to get through text, that's just how it felt to me when I read it.

   > That said, URL filtering isn't necessarily effective at keeping your behavior private either. There's an argument to be made about ClearURLs and URL filtering in general being counter intuitive, as you might stick out among a sea of other users with marketing params in their URLs.

I'm personally kind of torn on this kind of thing, because fingerprinting is the default in the www since you expose your IP to every server you connect to. I personally believe it's worth to try and reclaim the privacy even if it could expose to even more advanced tracking techniques. Also things like removing google analytics tags and removing the "google.com" of urls in google searches is probably really effective. (you'll notice that Google only adds this redirect mechanism if you have JavaScript disabled, probably because they don't need that if you're running JavaScript anyways).

   > Still wishing for a Tor-like solution to anonymizing all users on a browser configuration level.

One can wish. I'm very pessimistic about Tor and i2p though, the market incentives to block these networks are just too great to ignore for most business. Ultimately though I believe the problem is that privacy is not a computers problem but a human one.