Who is not using a Pi-Hole / Adgaurd or even browser extensions like Privacy Badger / uBlock / Noscript, and if not, do you think it's too much effort?

If you have actually seen how much junk loads on a webpage, that may be enough to convince you to at least install a browser extension.

uBlock has a horribly complicated UI, to the point I had no idea there was an “advanced” menu to enable the list of website domains.

If someone is “advanced” enough to even care about ads or unwanted trackers, why would it be “advanced” to show a list of whst is currently loading on the page?

EFF’s privacy badger doesn’t think it’s advanced, it shows the list as soon as you click the icon.

Ghostery (they sell your data) doesn’t think it’s advanced, it’s the first thing you see.

NoScript, probably more advanced / complicated also shows the list immediately, so why would uBlock origin, which is about blocking specific ads or trackers, hide one of the most important parts of the program?

If you don’t have just the right lists installed, you could be loading font domains, or other things that are unnecesaary, although fonts are nice, it’s just more stuff that has to load, and default uBlock won’t show you what is loaded on a website.

So that really bothers me, because the 10s of MILLIONS of uBlock Origin users probably have no idea there is an advanced menu, and if they do see it are probably thinking they better not modify settings there, so they’ll never see the list. I think that’s a poor UI design and does not help users.

With that rant out of the way, I would like to encourage and persuade anyone reading this, who has not used Privacy Badger or uBlock Origin with the supoosedly advanced domain list enabled to please give an install, and look at just how many pieces there are to websites these days. It is not necessary to load 25 different websites, ads, and trackers to access a website, but yet if you just load a webpage without any addons, that is exactly what will happen.

I’m not at all, in any way trying to support ad blocking, ever. If Ioad Pandora, and I block too much where the ads are not working but the website isn’t quite aware and I get no ads I feel awful as I am not a subscriber–they already offer an ad-free half hour mode, so let’s be respectful to these services, not all ads should be blocked. Most ads are garbage from worthless companies, but even so, that’s who pays their bills.

Block ALL trackers, especially because they are hidden, usually small un-detectable probably translucent pixels, who never asked for your permission to track you, deserve zero respect from any human being, including the person whose salary is supported by developing things they don’t want to develop. The developer probably doesn’t even respect their own development work and wishes they worked for an honorable decent company or service.

DuckDuckGo Android and iOS web browser has a special feature called

App Tracking Protection

But if you already use a filter or firewall or dns+firewall such as RethinkDNS, you will not need this program. But if you have never installed a vpn service or a firewall program on your phone, this feature is incredible.

It even blocks a bug collection domain on Pandora app, so it goes quite far in what it blocks, and it’s not really the app it’s blocking, it’s using a large list of tracking domains, and blocks that when it goes through the duckduckgo service. You’ll get hundreds, sometimes thousands of requests that will be blocked, because apps want to do one thing and one thing only

track you.

This is wrong, disrespectful and hidden from you without your permission. Apple is leading the charge here and doing incredibly well at it, taking away BILLIONS from facebook, with a simple pop-up message with two options

Allow tracking

Do not allow tracking

So nice and effective, but Android / Google has a business model setup for ads and tracking, so they don’t want that feature to ever be a part of the system. There are about 15 different Android and Google domains that load every time you turn on your cellular or wi-fi, to collect data about your device, check what version you are on, and various unknows that will probably never be explained by Google as to what exactly they collect and their purpose.

Firebase installations domain sends what features of an app you actually use, directly to the app developers, automatically, which is the only really nice one, the rest are collecting un-disclosed data about your device, every time you connect. I don’t think the duckduckgo tracking protection blocks those yet, but maybe it does, haven’t used the app in many years because I do my own more involved filtering. But for someone just getting started, all you have to do is enable the option, a bit confusing, inside the duckduckgo web browser–even if you don’t use it for browsing, under settings and it will create a “vpn” style connection, but that is local, and it is to intercept all the network activity in order to block trackers.

This is a normal thing on Android, and is the only way (without admin / root access) to route network traffic to a filter. It could not be easier! You’ll be surprised with how much is blocked, and if you have family and friends with Android or iOS, who don’t know anything about this topic, have them install duckduckgo and enable the feature, it really is that simple.

So what excuse do you have not to use such filters online? None. So get to filtering. It can even improve network performance for others on wi-fi since you won’t be using up all the wireless air-time contention loading useless trackers on every website you go to, and every app you open.

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Excuse me? Who the F… are you to prescribe my use of my internet connection, PC and browser?

I hate WiFi but you don’t know that as you never heard of me before now. So don’t assume I use it :roll_eyes: (FWI: I switched my router wifi stuff off for safety reasons. The only thing I can’t switch off is the ISP mesh network stuff for roaming. Unfortunate, but as I don’t pay for that bandwidth anyway and it’s on a separate network segment not related to mine, I don’t care too much)

So I work in software development and it baffles my that my colleagues do not use any form of ad blocking. I had to browbeat some of them to use these. If people who work with computers and web all day don’t even bother with such a simple tool, image all the “normal” users.

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those who care and know probably, do.
those who don’t care and know, don’t.
those who care and don’t know, exclaim loudly on the internet.

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Ee. Using brave browser and its crazy how much extra stuff gets loaded when cuing a page! You can turn it off easily in the browser if it affects your bank app or whatever.

I was against using ublock for a long time since I want my browser to be as lightweight as possible, but YouTube ads got to the point where I can’t watch a video on peace. Same goes with twitch streams, so I eventually bit the bullet and I have to say, I should’ve done so much sooner.

How long has it been since YouTube started detecting adblockers and refusing to play videos with them enabled? Or is there a new workaround?

I’m using an ad-blocker, but YT still plays. Though that said, recently I’ve noticed browser to be laggy/unresponsive after a fair while of having YT open on several tabs. And I also noticed it starts using more resources (RAM, CPU threads) to make said browser laggy.

I’ve no clue, I’ve been on Firefox for the longest time and I haven’t noticed anything.

A very long time…

adblockers see how youtube is delivering ads and blocks them, youtube detects how adblockers are blocking their ads and prevents them from working or blocks users from using adblockers. Youtube just happened to be briefly winning the battle, now they’re back to losing but the battle continues.

I would like you to think about how you would actually verbally respond if someone were having a similar discussion with you in person.

Would you respond hostily and angry for someone discussing trackers on websites?

I think, so I am. And I don’t think the problem is me. The implications of that is for you to think about :man_mage:

I get it, the excuse language could be read in a certain tone, and you read it in a rude nasty tone. That’s how you think I meant it.

The way I think about it is, how about provide a reasonable or logical reason to not use a tracking blocker, I’ll wait for a response while you think about a logical reason to use a web browser to allow yourself to be tracked for no benefit to yourself.

The main reason to not use tracking blockers is generally because they break things… Same reason an option to block lists of entire domains is an “advanced” feature. The more blocks the more breaks so it’s a balance between blocking only the most innocuous trackers which is basically pointless and blocking everything even potentially exploitable like tor browser with javascript off which breaks damn near everything.

Another reason is because if you have good operational security practices then it generally won’t matter if you’re tracked because nothing you do leads back to you regardless. Being mindful of the potential consequences of your online interactions is far more effective than running all the anti-tracking nonsense in the world and then proceeding to share family photos with an account on facebook that has your real name, phone number, address, etc.

If you think “Apple is leading the charge” in terms of anti tracking because they have a popup that reads “Do not allow tracking” then you have a ways to go in regards to being mindful of operational security. Make no mistake, Apple is right up there with Alphabet and Meta when it comes to collecting user data.

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It’s just that, like with everything else, they want to have a monopoly.

Worse, I had a coworker who had ads show up on her outlook on the web. Like one of those old school banner ads. I tried to hint to her that it isn’t safe to have extensions inject ads into corporate mail but nothing would go through…