'Unblockable' web trackers emerge

[e1-531g]

Bad news: 'Unblockable' web trackers emerge. Good news: Firefox with uBlock Origin can stop it. Chrome, not so much

Ad-tech arms race continues: DNS system exploited to silently follow folks around the web

[frcc]

Prior to enabling "ublock" as an add-on in Firefox, you are presented with a message asking for permission and essentially informing you "that to protect you from tracking we have to track you". To me it looks like it is its own tracking mechanism.

Anyway
Playing "devils advocate", couldn't this be just another method to obtain your information with the ruse of "we are protecting you".
Wouldn't it be better to use an onion router?

[e1-531g]

Originally Posted by frcc

Prior to enabling "ublock" as an add-on in Firefox, you are presented with a message asking for permission and essentially informing you "that to protect you from tracking we have to track you". To me it looks like it is its own tracking mechanism.

It needs permissions to work...
uBlock privacy policy:

uBlock Origin does not collect any data of any kind.

uBlock Origin has no home server.
uBlock Origin doesn't embed any kind of analytic hooks in its code.
uBlock Origin doesn't accept donations or any other form of financing.

The only time uBlock Origin connects to a remote server is to update the filter lists and other related assets. If you disable auto-update in the "Filter lists" pane in the dashboard, uBlock Origin will not connect to any remote server, unless you click "Update now" and only if there are assets deemed "out of date".

The project is currently hosted on github.com, which is owned by GitHub Inc. (now a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation), and thus is unrelated to uBlock Origin.

That is all.

Do you have any evidence that uBlock sends any personal data or any data about Web usage somewhere in the Internet?

[Prevet]

I tried ublock and a couple of other blockers and then tested Chrome and Firefox on https://panopticlick.eff.org/ and each time it said my browser was unique. The only browser that improved the score was tor-browser. So doesn't that mean that tracking blockers are useless on standard browsers?

[e1-531g]

Originally Posted by Prevet

I tried ublock and a couple of other blockers and then tested Chrome and Firefox on https://panopticlick.eff.org/ and each time it said my browser was unique. The only browser that improved the score was tor-browser. So doesn't that mean that tracking blockers are useless on standard browsers?

No. A lot of websites includes only trackers from major vendors, so just blocking few trackers means blocking most of tracking. It is not perfect, but not useless either.

[frcc]

This is the generic ad-on message you are presented with when processing the ublock for Firefox
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb...urce=inproduct

And this is the specific message for ublock.

[e1-531g]

Originally Posted by frcc

This is the generic ad-on message you are presented with when processing the ublock for Firefox
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb...urce=inproduct

And this is the specific message for ublock.

Yes, I know. It can't do anything useful without permissions. While it technically has enough permissions to track, it does not use it for tracking. It is widely used content-blocking open-source extension. You can inspect it code or treat it as black-box and monitor its activity to check whether author is lying in Privacy Policy.

[victorvas]

Most of my friends prefer AddblockPlus over Ublock Origin.
What do you think of AddblockPlus?

[fvgit]

Originally Posted by victorvas

What do you think of AddblockPlus?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adbloc...#Controversies

[e1-531g]

Originally Posted by victorvas

Most of my friends prefer AddblockPlus over Ublock Origin.
What do you think of AddblockPlus?

Adblock Plus, apart from controversies regarding acceptable ads, was designed as ad-blocker.
uBlock Origin is content blocker. It just happens most people use uBlock Origin for ad-blocking.