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Martin Brinkmann at gHacks reports
A new WebExtension version of the popular content blocker uBlock Origin was [uploaded on August 31] to Mozilla's official add-ons repository for Firefox.
The new version is compatible with Firefox's new WebExtensions standard for extensions, and will as such continue to work when Firefox 57 gets released.
This first official release of the WebExtensions version of uBlock Origin works for the most part just like the legacy add-on version.
Users may experience issues however when they upgrade from the legacy version of the add-on to the new version.
Raymond Hill, the developer of uBlock Origin suggests that 32-bit users of Firefox stay on version 1.13.8 of the add-on until these issues are resolved.
[Workarounds for storage limit bug for extra filter lists and custom settings described]
[...] Additional information [is] available on uBlock Origin's Mozilla AMO page, and the GitHub project site.
(Score: 3, Informative) by pkrasimirov on Friday September 01 2017, @10:03AM (5 children)
Firefox is making some calls to the mothership without going trough the API so add-ons cannot block it.
See list of Firefox "bugs" that cannot be helped [github.com]. Note: this link is broken due to SoylentNews bug; you have to manually enclose the phrase browser bug in double quotes to get search results.
Of these #2927 ublock is not working in firefox private browsing [github.com] and #426 uBlock is not blocking ads in about:newtab images [github.com] are interesting. I remember also an issue where one user put a proxy or something between the browser and the Internet and observed requests to google even they should match the filter. I cannot find the issue now but it's in the tracker.
(Score: 2) by lx on Friday September 01 2017, @10:44AM (1 child)
Luckily there are forks of Firefox. For now I switched to Waterfox [waterfoxproject.org]. They removed many useless and annoying features of FF and your addons keep on working. Not sure if they managed to remove all the unwanted behaviour at this time.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @06:51PM
...and, since ~November 2016 (50.0), [archive.is] they've had Linux ports available. [waterfoxproject.org]
(OS X too.)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by urza9814 on Friday September 01 2017, @01:18PM (1 child)
That's really not the purpose of these plugins.
Honestly, why would anyone think for a moment that blocking things from the browser has any benefit to security or privacy? Is that the only piece of software installed on your device? Is that the only device that ever accesses your network? And you really think the browser's plugins can fully control the browser itself? What's that saying about the tail wagging the dog?
If you just don't want to see ads, these plugins are an arguably quick and convenient way to do that. That's their sole use case. If you actually want to block traffic to certain bad actors like Google, you really need to be doing that at the router. Personally, I use a pfSense SG-2220 with the pfBlockerNG package, but there's certainly cheaper/easier options available -- including buying from pfSense, looks like they recently added some kind of Raspberry Pi style device. Or build your own, or do it through an OpenWRT system, or an old PC turned proxy server...But if nothing else at least use a proper local firewall program. A browser plugin is not a firewall.
(Score: 1) by purple_cobra on Saturday September 02 2017, @03:40PM
That little Pi-alike looks very interesting. I've been toying with the idea of building something similar for some time, but that looks like it might be cheaper than building my own unit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @01:21PM
> requests to Google
*cough* safebrowsing *cough*