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Privacy Tool uBlock (NOT uBlock Origin) Adds User Tracking Feature

posted by martyb on Thursday May 17 2018, @06:19AM   Printer-friendly
from the with-privacy-like-this... dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The once-venerated then once-defunct uBlock had been abandoned for years. Minimal interaction on Github, almost no commits, no interaction on the issue tracker not much of anything besides asking for donations for nothing. Well, a few months ago, a user by the name of uBlockAdmin unceremoniously joined Github and was given control of the uBlock repository. Not many changes have happened since. Basically, just changing the Readme around and bumping the versions for the various browsers, while ignoring the breaking bugs that makes bumping versions a bad idea. But, one commit does stand out from the rest: https://github.com/uBlockAdmin/uBlock/commit/76b89c0a22d20f3a66d7feab14e024f56ca65539 That is right folks, a privacy tool that makes money from people confusing it for another piece of software now has the bonus feature of tracking you! With renewed activity and new versions being deployed to the various extension stores (thus making it harder to tell the real from old by latest release date and incompatibility with newer browser versions), it might be a good idea to check if you are using the real thing: https://github.com/gorhill/ublock

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  • (Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Thursday May 17 2018, @09:14AM (3 children)

    by pkrasimirov (3358) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 17 2018, @09:14AM (#680665)

    Is a plugin going to block URLs for another plugin? Can uMatrix save users from uBlock?

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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday May 17 2018, @02:14PM (2 children)

    by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Thursday May 17 2018, @02:14PM (#680715) Journal

    Heck, it might. I'll have to find a URL for the fake first.

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    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 17 2018, @04:43PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 17 2018, @04:43PM (#680769)

      Ask and you shall receive: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock/epcnnfbjfcgphgdmggkamkmgojdagdnn [google.com] and https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock/ [mozilla.org]

      One thing to note is that the Firefox version is not compatible with the new "Quantum" Firefox, so less of a danger of mistake there. At least until they get smart enough to merge the new Firefox code base. Of course, maybe that is why it is taking so long. Solving a massive merge conflict like that, especially when you can't just clobber all of your changes with theirs, is a huge pain. But then again, I'd just do it the smart way by writing a Python script, as most changes are simple copyright substitutions.