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Submitted via IRC for AnonymousLuser
Blocking Hyperlink Auditing Tracking Pings with Extensions
For those who are not familiar with hyperlink auditing, or Pings, it is an HTML feature that allows sites to track when a link is clicked. Creating hyperlink auditing URLs is very easy, as you can simply create a normal hyperlink HTML tag, but also include a ping="[url]" variable as shown below.
<a href="https://www.google.com/" ping="https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/pong.php">Ping Me</a>
[...] With most popular browsers now enabling this feature by default, with Firefox doing so in the future, the only way to disable hyperlink auditing is through the use of browser addons and extension. For those who want to retain control over whether this feature can be used, below are three extensions that allow you to disable hyperlink auditing pings in Chrome and Firefox.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @01:13PM (6 children)
uBlock is for babies, grownups use uMatrix (by the same developer)
The author himself stated "uBlock Origin's main goal is to help users neutralize such privacy-invading apparatus — in a way that welcomes those users who don't wish to use more technical, involved means (such as uMatrix)." -- https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock [github.com]
So upgrade today to https://github.com/gorhill/uMatrix [github.com]
(Score: 2) by The Shire on Tuesday May 14 2019, @02:17PM (4 children)
The assumption there is that privacy can only be obtained if you have absolute granular control over the network stream, but that's not the case. And you have to consider the audience. The vast majority of end users want their privacy but they want it in an uncomplicated way. uBlock Origin fills that niche.
The ultra paranoid or the geeks who want to see whats going on in the background and selectively block it can use uMatrix, or even a combination of other addons that accomplish the same function. But for most folks the cost/benefit of uMatrix isn't worth it. People who are that paranoid should use Tor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @04:25PM (2 children)
Lazy baby want all now but with zero effort! A blacklist is the naive approach here, only a whitelist makes sense. But then it does require a little bit of work...
Fortunately we're given this choice. I think people should value their privacy for the sake of democracy.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday May 14 2019, @07:56PM (1 child)
uMatrix has built-in blacklists in the Settings under Assets which are applied to the global scope.
Also, it comes per-configured for casual users to only block third-party scripts and such. Personally I've manually edited the defaults to block everything except images and css from anywhere:
* * * block
* * css allow
* * frame allow
* * image allow
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @08:14PM
i.e. whitelist
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @08:24PM
Private mode cookies don't get scrubbed without a new identity and with 10-15 minute tunnel intervals, they can track you across enough circuits to deanonymize you. I use uBlock+uMatrix+Tor. Ensures cookies never get set to begin with, and ad links aren't used.
Personally I think you are probably better off with a normal web browser those features, plus all TBB patches EXCEPT starting into private mode. If private mode is off then plugins like uMatrix and others can do periodic scrubbing, scanning, or filtering of cookies, html5 data, etc. Something that is disallowed inside of Private Windows/Incognito Mode sessions, meaning that you can't keep track of what data needs scrubbing, or if your plugins are scrubbing it adequately for your purposes.
If you use TBB, be sure to warn others so they understand the ramifications. This issue with the Private Window sessions has been reported to both Mozilla and the Tor Project since 2012 and 2015(?) and both have said it is not a bug. Personally I consider it a dangerously misleading feature.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 14 2019, @03:25PM
ISTR from the end days of HTTP switchboard that uBlock and uMatrix were complimentary add-ons, in fact, on checking
https://github.com/gorhill/httpswitchboard/blob/master/README.md [github.com]
'..Important: No longer developed. Project has been split into two distinct, more advanced extensions: uBlock Origin and uMatrix.'
Bold added, my reading of this is that if you're only using uMatrix, then you're missing out on functionality that uBlock provides that it doesn't..