The generic nuclear option to hide terrible web design, bypass (some) paywalls, and improve performance 1000x is to disable javascript. ublock and adnauseam both have a button to disable all javascript on a page, which is handy when reading articles on sites filled with garbage.
On Chrome/Firefox I use uBlock Origin which works well. I’m not sure if the community recommends something else at this point.
I also use various other extensions like StopTheMadness to disable right click hijacking and other bad behavior and Banish on iOS to prevent certain banners from appearing.
For example, YouTube has no ads in iOS Brave. Since iOS doesn't allow real browsers and extensions, Brave has been a sanity-saver for me.
Pair that with uBlock on desktop and you're golden. 98% of the sites don't break at all either.
Be slightly careful, there's a known issue (limitation of Chrome really) where requests and javascript are not blocked in the first few seconds of launching a browser or an incognito window (you can test this yourself). And this is true even with "Suspend network activity until all filter lists are loaded" enabled, because I think it's some limitation on Chrome as to when exactly extensions get loaded.
So if you do rely on javascript being disabled for safety, after a fresh launch or new incognito window, you should visit a safe webpage first before going to the risky one.
I now have 68 extensions on my Brave (desktop). Imagine seeing 68 additional icons on my macOS launchpad!
Oh you Apple users.
Also, it's pretty cool that NextDNS has this: https://github.com/nextdns/nextdns/wiki
Single app, all devices, works great out of the box.
https://gitlab.com/nitrohorse/ios14-encrypted-dns-mobileconf...
No idea if I should really trust them, or if there’s a better way to install profiles directly from CIRA or Mullvad like I use.
Nice thing is that it’s device wide and all free (hopefully not for malicious intents).
Every scrap of data collected about you will be used against you. It doesn't matter if it's accurate or not, nobody cares if they data they have about you is accurate, data brokers will happily sell your personal info to anyone even knowing full well that it's got inaccurate and conflicting info in it. Many won't even know because the process is entirely automated.
By automatically clicking on ads and "expressing interest" in random things you're just filling your dossier with ammo which gets handed to others to fire at you. Every random thing you add to your permanent record is one more thing that can only hurt you.
You cannot know what will prejudice someone against you. Maybe one day adnauseam decides to click on something that gets you flagged as having a certain political view, or having a certain sexual orientation, or being an alcoholic, or having a mental illness, or being at a certain income level, or belonging to a certain religion, etc. One day that exact data can cause you to get turned down for a job, or for housing. It can mean that a website charges you more than what your neighbor pays for the same product. It can mean your insurance rates go up next year.
You will never be told when it happens or why. Your health insurance company isn't going to tell you that they raised your rates because you (adnauseam) clicked on too many fast food ads last quarter. You're just suddenly getting a higher bill. Your auto insurance company won't tell you that they raised your rates after you were clicking ads for DUI lawyers, but suddenly they and every other insurance provider you try are quoting you higher monthly prices.
If your browser extension decides to go click on ads about abortions you could even end up being hauled into a texas courtroom and having to defend against charges. Sure, you'd get them thrown out eventually. Probably. But it would still cost you a ton of time and money and stress. The information in your dossier can get you targeted, harassed, or attacked by extremists. It can get be used against you in court rooms. It can get you investigated by three letter agencies. It can be used to impact your 'secret consumer score' or consumer trustworthiness rating.
The information being collected about you is sold to companies, employers, activists, extremists, and law enforcement. That data never goes away. It follows you for the rest of your life and will be used against you in ways you'll never be aware of and cannot today imagine. Filling your dossier with huge amounts of content (random or not) is dangerous and only increases your risk for zero benefit.
The upside though is big, stops all the insane bloat that runs on most pages. Many websites run fine with all their scripts blocked too.
NoScript will break pretty much 50% of the web. It'll take you about a day to whitelist all the sites you use daily and then it's smooth sailing.
I would also highly recommend this privacy focused list. https://www.privacytools.io/
I don’t care if I get wrongly labeled/categorized due to this. It’s not like my profile was an accurate representation of who I am before I turned on ad nauseam. If someone gets dragged into a court room for clicking ads, that would be funny, and I doubt they would have a hard time finding support from orgs like the EFF, gofundme, etc.
One long term benefit of this is that if a lot of people use it, advertisers will start seeing diminishing returns on their investment in internet ads. This will lead to reduced spending and less ads overall.
adnauseam does not do this. It only adds to your personal information. It doesn't hide anything.
> I don’t care if I get wrongly labeled/categorized due to this.
Then you must not care when you suffer the consequences of having been wrongly labeled/categorized. Nobody can make you care about yourself, your money, your safety, or your time if you refuse to.
> It’s not like my profile was an accurate representation of who I am before I turned on ad nauseam.
Again, nobody cares about how accurate it is or not. It's about quantity, not quality. Accurate or not, that data will increasingly impact your life in very real ways. The more data they have, the worse it will be for you.
> One long term benefit of this is that if a lot of people use it, advertisers will start seeing diminishing returns on their investment in internet ads.
this isn't actually true, because advertisers don't care. That's why the world is still and increasingly filled with ads that aren't laser focused on you as an individual. We have more and more ads on network TV, on billboards, on radio etc. None of them were stopped because they sometimes showed an ad to someone who doesn't care about it. Seriously, they don't care. You clicked, that's good enough for them. Sales aren't even always the goal. Being seen (or the appearance of being seen) is often all they need.
You're honestly only hurting yourself.
Right: regardless of what the ad is, just by auto-clicking on it you provide a signal that when aggregated together can roughly piece together your browsing history. As a toy scenario, maybe you only visit tech blogs, and tech blogs usually have tech related advertisements. The fact that you have auto-clicked on ads that were on tech sites, and not say fashion sites, is itself a strong signal that can be used to infer browsing history.
Also I think advertisers are already used to dealing with click fraud and so track metrics that won't meaningfully be impacted by this strategy.
> adnauseam does not do this. It only adds to your personal information. It doesn't hide anything.
It does hide it. It hides it between a bunch of garbage data. That’s the point.
If the CIA wants to assassinate me, a browser extension isn’t going to help. But if I start seeing ads for adult diapers while I’m browsing the internet, I’m going to laugh and feel good about knowing they wasted a few cents.
> Accurate or not, that data will increasingly impact your life in very real ways. The more data they have, the worse it will be for you.
Sorry, but that’s ridiculous. It sounds like FUD a spam blog operator would say lol.
> this isn't actually true, because advertisers don't care. That's why the world is still and increasingly filled with ads that aren't laser focused on you as an individual. We have more and more ads on network TV, on billboards, on radio etc. None of them were stopped because they sometimes showed an ad to someone who doesn't care about it. Seriously, they don't care. You clicked, that's good enough for them. Sales aren't even always the goal. Being seen (or the appearance of being seen) is often all they need.
When something isn’t working, you stop wasting money on it. Ads aren’t going to completely disappear, but if collecting personal data on individuals stops being effective, then marketers will need to turn to other means of targeting. It won’t happen tomorrow, but I did say “long term”
I mean, the comment is pretty straightforward, I don’t really see the need to come to this person’s defense. I agree that the iOS policy is dumb, but deliberately misinterpreting this person to make them correct is silly.
The former team left Privacy Tools and that is now just arbitrary recommendations by one guy who mostly spruiks cryptocurrency bullshit. He also has no experience when it comes to auditing, verifying any of what is recommended, not a sysop, not a programmer either.
If you want to know specifics about that see https://www.privacyguides.org/about/privacytools
Also see https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions
just blocklist known garbage
The personal and societal effect of ads are more tangible than the personal effect of tracking. Even if networks are truly able to use this data, it doesn't matter how precisely you can be served with ads if you don't see them.
Companies are using every scrap of data they can get their hands on to take more of our money and they want more. The government is buying up data they can't legally collect directly. It's pretty likely that you've already experienced real world consequences of the data taken from your online activities. (https://epic.org/issues/consumer-privacy/data-brokers/)
They tell us that all the tracking we're subjected to is just about ads, but the data being collected is used all over the place offline. What we really need is privacy regulation with real teeth, but that's probably not going to happen any time soon because it's making companies tons of money. There's a multi-billion dollar a year industry around the buying and selling of the our data for a reason.