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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @07:26AM (15 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @07:26AM (#948788)

    Without javascript, most ads don't appear. I've never seen a video or audio ad on a computer with javascript disabled. The only animated ads I see are gifs, which are getting quite rare.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Monday January 27 2020, @02:07AM (8 children)

      by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Monday January 27 2020, @02:07AM (#949109) Journal
      And if you get rid of images, none of those social media servers serving up "share with " icons gets a hit either. As an added bonus, no emojis.
      --
      SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
      • (Score: 3, Funny) by takyon on Monday January 27 2020, @02:49PM (5 children)

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday January 27 2020, @02:49PM (#949332) Journal

        No emojis, you say? 😂😂😂😂😂

        --
        [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
        • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @03:29PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @03:29PM (#949353)

          not true

          go ahead and try to remove them from a modern linux distribution. hell I can right click and insert emojis into config files for a text editor, and if I copy and paste actual config code IT GETS FUCKED UP because of the damn emojis!

          even the context menus let you insert emojis into a lot of shit

          i dont fucking care if they are catering to people that cant read in any or every language--if its a font, then let me choose it or delete it and error back to wingings or something everyone agrees was already useless so I know what to start ignoring again instead of having to clean up config files.

          i'd blame someone else but I think this is partially my fault for not killing everyone responsible when emojis as fonts were included in OSes and phones ... and not limited to just icons. encouraging the ignorance of the masses has a good result for the people in power, but i dont want to come out of my ivory tower and be inconvenienced with explaining to them to leave me alone since they couldnt read the sign

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2020, @07:15PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2020, @07:15PM (#959626)

            Maybe you need software that can handle Unicode then.

        • (Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Monday January 27 2020, @05:42PM

          by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Monday January 27 2020, @05:42PM (#949424) Journal
          Doesn't show in links.
          --
          SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
        • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday January 28 2020, @06:06AM

          by fustakrakich (6150) on Tuesday January 28 2020, @06:06AM (#949930) Journal

          No emojis, you say?

          Yeah just disable unicode :-)

          --
          La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
      • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday February 06 2020, @05:58AM (1 child)

        by fustakrakich (6150) on Thursday February 06 2020, @05:58AM (#954640) Journal

        As an added bonus, no emojis.

        We could just get rid of unicode for that.

        --
        La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
        • (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday February 06 2020, @06:22AM

          by fustakrakich (6150) on Thursday February 06 2020, @06:22AM (#954653) Journal

          Shit! Didn't even see my own previous comment!

          --
          La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
    • (Score: 2) by coolgopher on Tuesday January 28 2020, @07:40AM

      by coolgopher (1157) on Tuesday January 28 2020, @07:40AM (#949966)

      And with an about:config entry of "image.animation_mode = none", you don't have to put up with animated gifs either. Assuming you're on a Mozilla-ish browser, of course.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by bradley13 on Monday February 03 2020, @10:58AM (3 children)

      by bradley13 (3053) on Monday February 03 2020, @10:58AM (#953084) Homepage Journal

      I do this: JavaScript disabled by default. There are a lot of websits out there that depends on JS frameworks to deliver content, which means that the sites are ususable without JS.

      What I find equally disturbing are the sites that don't work properly without a user-agent string. That is specifically declared as optional information in the HTTP protocol, but many sites freak if it is not present. Sure, you can lie, but it seems to me that simply omitting it should also be acceptable.

      --
      Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @09:21AM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 17 2020, @09:21AM (#959089)

        Lack of user-agent is very common with spam bots. If you have ever administered a website based on standard frameworks (drupal, wordpress) then you know what I am talking about. Consequently, a lot of anti-spam addins block requests that don't have user-agent. I do it on my wordpress website myself, using https://wordpress.org/plugins/stop-spammer-registrations-plugin/ [wordpress.org] .

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2020, @09:25AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 18 2020, @09:25AM (#959475)

          don't the spam bots just get taught to lie?

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2020, @09:50PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 19 2020, @09:50PM (#960025)

            Depends on the spam bot. Most of the big ones do or are configured to add one. The problem is the people who use them. They either don't add one, set it to blank, or they send the default. As you may have been able to tell from the quality of spam postings, they aren't always the sharpest tools in the shed.

    • (Score: 2) by Lester on Monday February 24 2020, @08:45AM

      by Lester (6231) on Monday February 24 2020, @08:45AM (#961753) Journal

      Without a browser, most ads don't appear.

      The question is that most sites nowadays need javascript. Probably those scripts add very little to usability. If people didn't accept sites with javascript, except in a few cases, then web designers would stop using them except for seldom cases.

      But I'm afraid that a few nerds disabling scripts will not revert the trend.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Sunday January 26 2020, @08:43AM (3 children)

    by BsAtHome (889) on Sunday January 26 2020, @08:43AM (#948801)

    Not one blocker but many extensions to control the view are in use concurrently:
    - Adblock plus
    - Privacy Badger
    - NoScript
    - GreaseMonkey
    - In a private session
    - No cloud crap enabled

    Then, you need to be vigilant about what to accept or temporarily enable. It is not only the ads. They are just annoying. It is the persistent tracking embedded in the websites that gets my blood boiling.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @08:05AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @08:05AM (#949231)

      The problem is the bullies, corporations and the police.

      We planted a garden. A wonderful rose garden. And there were people stopping to look at it and say "hey, that's neat!" and we, the good natured fools we are, thought it would be great to open our garden to the public, so they can come in and enjoy it. And hey, who knows, maybe some of them might want to plant a few roses themselves? We can only benefit from it, right?

      So we let them in, even showed them how to plant roses. And while they were not really too good gardeners, we handed them a few tools to make the work easier for them. And some of them (ok, a handful of them) actually went and built something nice. Most just wandered about and smelled a few roses. We even built them a few paths they could wander on so they don't accidentally stumble upon that field we built that camo net over, ya know, with our "special spices".

      A few came in and trampled all over the roses. We shrugged and grabbed them and threw them out, because we not only know how to plant roses, we also know how to use their thorns to smack those bullies about and give them a wedgie on their way out. We build this garden after all, and we know every plant and every bush here, you can't hide from us! Well, ok, I admit, some of us thought it's fun to make fools out of the idiots that have no idea how to plant roses and snuck into their gardens when they weren't looking (and too stupid to close the door so people can only look but not touch), dyed their roses pink and blue polkadotted, mostly for fun and to ridicule them. It was good natured fun, hey, we did that to each other too and we really had a good laugh!

      One cardinal mistake we made is that we built a few paths to the camo net patches, too, because, hey, they're nice folks and wanna have some of the good stuff too, what's the harm in giving them some? Well, there's not really a problem with that, but when the bullies trampled across our fields, they also trampled through the fields of those that can't defend themselves, and these guys started to call for the police. And they eventually stumbled towards our camo net patches and, well, erh... well, they decided that it's a problem, ya know? If we hadn't built paths to them, only we would have found our way to those "special places", through the hedges and the overgrown paths that need machetes to get to. Few policemen had those machetes...

      Also along came the corporations who found out that people love to wander in our nice garden and started to built there too. At first, we didn't bother to worry. Like the native americans didn't worry when the first whities came along, we let them settle in our garden. Until suddenly we were told that we can't go to a few places of our garden anymore because that's now off limits. In our own garden! Not to mention that they were crying bloody murder if you went and polkadotted their roses!

      And now we're sitting here, in our ever shrinking corner of our once wonderful garden, trampled down by the masses, broken up into lots by corporations with a policemen at every corner making sure you don't plant where you're not supposed to, and of course that you don't try to camo net anything.

      If there's any lesson to learn, than that we should not let the masses in next time we build a garden. The seeds will be more expensive, granted, but at least we can grow what we want and keep the harvest.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Chocolate on Sunday January 26 2020, @02:42PM (17 children)

    by Chocolate (8044) on Sunday January 26 2020, @02:42PM (#948851) Journal

    How could this have been left out? It's the modern replacement for NoScript

    --
    Bit-choco-coin anyone?
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 26 2020, @06:28PM (6 children)

      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Sunday January 26 2020, @06:28PM (#948947) Homepage Journal

      Damned skippy, it is. Of course if you're using PaleMoon it's the ηMatrix fork that you want.

      --
      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Chocolate on Monday January 27 2020, @04:39AM (5 children)

        by Chocolate (8044) on Monday January 27 2020, @04:39AM (#949188) Journal

        Really? I load the original V1 from the github archives. It works well in palemoon.

        --
        Bit-choco-coin anyone?
        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 27 2020, @04:51AM (4 children)

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday January 27 2020, @04:51AM (#949194) Homepage Journal

          Is it still being updated to deal with new annoyances and patch security holes though?

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 2) by Chocolate on Monday January 27 2020, @06:11AM (3 children)

            by Chocolate (8044) on Monday January 27 2020, @06:11AM (#949208) Journal

            The cost of using old software. I mainly have it to block third party cookies and JS which it does well. That said, I also run several other plugins for coverage.

            I've found that I don't truly appreciate what adblocking does until I try to buy online. Tying ad js into the purchase logic may seem like good business, but it's seriously annoying.

            --
            Bit-choco-coin anyone?
            • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 28 2020, @01:56AM (2 children)

              by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 28 2020, @01:56AM (#949738) Journal

              Tying ad js into the purchase logic may seem like good business, but it's seriously annoying.

              Definitely. Purchases are becoming more difficult because of it. You look at the page, click noscript options, and ask yourself, "Which of this long, long list, is actually necessary to buy this thing?" Usually, it's two or three things, but you have to pick them out of a list of 20 to 50. Sometimes, I change my mind, and close the window. Of course, I find the "contact us" first, and fire off a complaint about all the unnecessary scripting.

              • (Score: 2) by coolgopher on Tuesday January 28 2020, @07:41AM

                by coolgopher (1157) on Tuesday January 28 2020, @07:41AM (#949968)

                Thank you.

              • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Chocolate on Tuesday January 28 2020, @10:54PM

                by Chocolate (8044) on Tuesday January 28 2020, @10:54PM (#950297) Journal

                I had to use the 'blackbox' function to get a site to work due to how the js was throwing an error on the checkout. With the browser ignoring the ga missing error the checkout worked. I left them feedback saying they have tied their revenue into another unessential site.

                --
                Bit-choco-coin anyone?
    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday January 28 2020, @03:28PM (9 children)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 28 2020, @03:28PM (#950092) Journal

      When I originally submitted this pole idea to SN editors, I included uMatrix, because that is what I use:

      How do you handle ads?
      * Adblock
      * Adblock Plus
      * uBlock Origin
      * uMatrix
      * hosts file or DNS block
      * look at every ad
      * Other (please specify)

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 2) by Chocolate on Tuesday January 28 2020, @10:44PM (6 children)

        by Chocolate (8044) on Tuesday January 28 2020, @10:44PM (#950288) Journal

        .... I have no words

        --
        Bit-choco-coin anyone?
        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday January 28 2020, @10:46PM (2 children)

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 28 2020, @10:46PM (#950292) Journal

          A poll cat has your tongue?

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
          • (Score: 2) by Chocolate on Wednesday January 29 2020, @04:11AM (1 child)

            by Chocolate (8044) on Wednesday January 29 2020, @04:11AM (#950461) Journal

            Brain crashed. BSOD. Must restart. Please insert alcohol to continue.

            --
            Bit-choco-coin anyone?
            • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Friday January 31 2020, @01:38PM

              by Gaaark (41) on Friday January 31 2020, @01:38PM (#951753) Journal

              Better not say that around here: you'll get EVERYTHING BUT alcohol inserted... without lube.

              --
              --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 31 2020, @08:23PM (2 children)

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 31 2020, @08:23PM (#951941) Journal

          I still do not know why your supply of words appears to be depleted.

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
          • (Score: 2) by Chocolate on Sunday February 02 2020, @09:55PM (1 child)

            by Chocolate (8044) on Sunday February 02 2020, @09:55PM (#952875) Journal

            Looks like it is human error this time. It happens. Do we need an actual poll submission function?

            --
            Bit-choco-coin anyone?
            • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday February 03 2020, @03:00PM

              by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 03 2020, @03:00PM (#953137) Journal

              That might be extra neato.

              But development resources are limited.

              Would you need a new db table of poll submissions. And a page to view the submissions. And edit them. And delete them. And send a message to the submitter that their poll idea was accepted or rejected. And maybe a page that each user can see their submitted poll ideas (similar to stories) and see which were accepted / rejected.

              The idea of submitting poll ideas as a story was suggested to me by someone as a comment some weeks back. So I did it. Twice. A long "story" that was really a series of poll ideas that editors could pick from and accept or reject as they saw fit. It was suggested that the editors might be able to distinguish between an actual story and a list of poll suggestions -- and it turns out to be true!

              --
              People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Saturday February 01 2020, @04:17AM (1 child)

        by Fnord666 (652) on Saturday February 01 2020, @04:17AM (#952181) Homepage

        When I originally submitted this pole idea to SN editors, I included uMatrix, because that is what I use:

        How do you handle ads?
        * Adblock
        * Adblock Plus
        * uBlock Origin
        * uMatrix
        * hosts file or DNS block
        * look at every ad
        * Other (please specify)

        My apologies. That was completely my fault. You did include uMatrix in your original poll and I dropped it during the line by line "copypasta" that occurs to build the poll. It was absolutely not intentional and on the plus side it has generated some additional discussion! Next poll I will definitely be counting the choices in both the poll and the submission.

        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday February 03 2020, @03:01PM

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 03 2020, @03:01PM (#953138) Journal

          Not included in my original submission was NoScript. I had forgotten all about that one.

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @02:57PM (10 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @02:57PM (#948864)

    Gz guys can we get a proper list together?

    • (Score: 1) by ze on Sunday January 26 2020, @07:55PM (9 children)

      by ze (8197) on Sunday January 26 2020, @07:55PM (#948971)

      Isn't pihole a hosts file/dns block, just deployed as a dns server for the local network?

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @09:28PM (8 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 26 2020, @09:28PM (#949012)

        It can do more than just block like a hosts file. For example, you can do surrogates, transparent or white pixels, DNSSEC verification by default, encrypted DNS, and more. And you get all of that without having to configure clients individually.

        • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 27 2020, @04:53AM (7 children)

          by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday January 27 2020, @04:53AM (#949195) Homepage Journal

          You can get all that from your local machine as well. It's just another Linux box.

          --
          My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @07:40AM (6 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 27 2020, @07:40AM (#949225)

            And you get all of that without having to configure clients individually.

            Ah yes, you can do a global configuration across you whole network from your local client machines. Just do one and the configuration magically copies itself from one to the next. How could I forget?

            • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 27 2020, @03:35PM (5 children)

              by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday January 27 2020, @03:35PM (#949357) Homepage Journal

              Deliberate misunderstanding or do you really not get that any Linux box can do the same job as a pihole, for itself or for the entire network.

              --
              My rights don't end where your fear begins.
              • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @05:27AM (4 children)

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @05:27AM (#949899)

                Honest misunderstanding. The singular noun in your statement "from your local machine" made it sound like you were talking about your local client machines, not any random server (whether Linux or not) attached to your network. The Pi Hole uses standard packages available on a ton of distros and other OSes can run those or their own alternatives and accomplish the same thing. There really isn't special sauce behind the scenes.

                In that light, I suppose its real selling point is that it is a slick and easy way to set it up with a nice frontend interface. It is literally so easy to set up that my octogenarian father went from nothing to protecting the entire network from ads, phishing, and malware domains in 15 or so steps, including opening the packaging. Can't quite say the same about a random Linux box, at least without consulting reams of docs, man pages, and conf files.

                • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 28 2020, @05:50AM

                  by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday January 28 2020, @05:50AM (#949917) Homepage Journal

                  Ah, no worries then. Carry on.

                  --
                  My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                • (Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Saturday February 01 2020, @04:21AM (2 children)

                  by Fnord666 (652) on Saturday February 01 2020, @04:21AM (#952185) Homepage

                  Honest misunderstanding. The singular noun in your statement "from your local machine" made it sound like you were talking about your local client machines, not any random server (whether Linux or not) attached to your network. The Pi Hole uses standard packages available on a ton of distros and other OSes can run those or their own alternatives and accomplish the same thing. There really isn't special sauce behind the scenes.

                  In that light, I suppose its real selling point is that it is a slick and easy way to set it up with a nice frontend interface. It is literally so easy to set up that my octogenarian father went from nothing to protecting the entire network from ads, phishing, and malware domains in 15 or so steps, including opening the packaging. Can't quite say the same about a random Linux box, at least without consulting reams of docs, man pages, and conf files.

                  The only issue I have with this is that unless you (generic, not you personally) always VPN back to your local network, you lose all of those features if you ever leave the basement. Of course you should be doing defense in depth, but your have essentially just filled in your moat.

                  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 02 2020, @04:52PM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 02 2020, @04:52PM (#952749)

                    It's probably enough if you do your internet shopping/taxes/important stuff from your home and don't do anything you want to keep private on your phone or outside networks. For most people, this is enough. People that need a VPN are probably already using one.

                  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday February 19 2020, @04:45PM

                    by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 19 2020, @04:45PM (#959906) Homepage Journal

                    There is already a pronoun to use for the you(generic) that avoids confusion.

                    one.

                    as in
                        ... unless one always VPNs back ...

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 28 2020, @01:07AM (12 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 28 2020, @01:07AM (#949716) Journal

    At the router, hosts file blacklists tons of crap. It's too much bother to keep multiple machines updated with everything, so the router is first line of defense.

    uBlock Origin is installed on everything behind the router. Javascript disabled.

    Each machine, and each browser is configured differently from that point. Security in one browser is pretty lax, so that I can look at stupid shit like Facefook, meaning that I allow javascript to run on some sites. The browser used for online financial transactions is locked down much more tightly. Oh, I mentioned multiple browsers? That, in and of itself is a line of defense. Visiting hackmeimstupid.com with Vivaldi or Opera doesn't expose anything locked away in Firefox or Chromium.

    Remember, security isn't a product, it's a process. If you rely on hosts files, they have to be updated regularly. Your browser extensions aren't static, they have to be updated in response to new threats.

    And, you have to be aware of what the extensions are doing! If AdBlock is collecting your information, then selling it on, then AdBlock isn't doing you any good at all, right? If the addon is accepting money from advertisers to allow their ads through, you've gained nothing with the addon.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @05:34AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @05:34AM (#949905)

      If the addon is accepting money from advertisers to allow their ads through, you've gained nothing with the addon.

      Sure you have: a false sense of security, additional unnecessary load that circumvents the protection you thought you had, and getting to be a participant in one of the largest known and ongoing protection rackets on the Internet. /s

    • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday January 28 2020, @06:47PM (3 children)

      by Freeman (732) on Tuesday January 28 2020, @06:47PM (#950170) Journal

      Multiple browsers won't save you, if your system is pwned by insert sketchy site.

      --
      Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday January 28 2020, @11:33PM (2 children)

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 28 2020, @11:33PM (#950319) Journal

        True. And, that is a big part of the reason I got off of Windows. Remember the wonderful early XP days? You could do a fresh install, connect to the internet for updates, and be pwned before the updates downloaded. Oh, those were good times!! I finally wised up, and cached those updates locally, so the XP computer didn't have to connect immediately after a fresh install.

        In Linux land, I've had a browser hijacked a couple of times, but the system has never been pwned.

        • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday January 28 2020, @11:44PM (1 child)

          by Freeman (732) on Tuesday January 28 2020, @11:44PM (#950321) Journal

          True, but there are sane policies on Linux systems, where pwning of a browser != keys to the kingdom. It requires a fair bit more effort on the hackers' part. Still, I'd take the wild west days of XP vs the Surveillance days of Win10/Forever.

          --
          Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Fnord666 on Saturday February 01 2020, @04:29AM

            by Fnord666 (652) on Saturday February 01 2020, @04:29AM (#952191) Homepage

            True, but there are sane policies on Linux systems, where pwning of a browser != keys to the kingdom. It requires a fair bit more effort on the hackers' part. Still, I'd take the wild west days of XP vs the Surveillance days of Win10/Forever.

            Not running your every day workload as a user with root/admin privileges alleviates a lot of this. Set up user level accounts and don't log into the admin account unless you need to do so.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 02 2020, @10:33PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 02 2020, @10:33PM (#952899)

      That right - I do not block ads. I block tracking sites, ads are lost becuase of the tracking.

      Websites, send me ads all day, I wan to read them. But you want any information back beyond IP, bye.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03 2020, @09:29AM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03 2020, @09:29AM (#953076)

      See subject & here's how: APK Hosts File Engine 2.0++ 64-bit for Linux & BSD http://apk.it-mate.co.uk/APKHostsFileEngineForLinux.zip [it-mate.co.uk]

      Yields more security/speed/reliability/anonymity vs. any 1 solution (99% of threats use hostnames vs. IP address most firewalls use) more efficiently/FASTER + NATIVELY 4 less!

      Vs. "Bolt on 'MoAr' illogic-logic" slowing you hosts speed u up 2 ways: Adblocks + Hardcode fav. sites u spend most time @ vs. competition loaded w/ security bugs (DNS/AntiVir) + overheads slowing u (messagepass 'souled-out' to advertisers easily detected & blocked addons + firewall filtering drivers) & their complexity leads to exploitation!

      * ONLY 1 of its kind in GUI 4 Linux/BSD.

      (Better vs. Windows model in speed/efficiency/merge)

      This is NOT spam & you bullies/stalkers/impersonators (barbara hudson, c6gunner, webmistressrachel, Coren22, gweihir, amicusNYCL, etc...) know better than to pull your BULLSHIT spam mod censorship CRAP w/ me.

      APK

      P.S.=> Protects vs. script trackers/ads/DNS request tracking + redirect poisoned or downed DNS/botnets/malware downloads/malcript/email malicious payloads... apk

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 06 2020, @06:15AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 06 2020, @06:15AM (#954650)

        This is NOT spam & you bullies/stalkers/impersonators (barbara hudson, c6gunner, webmistressrachel, Coren22, gweihir, amicusNYCL, etc...) know better than to pull your BULLSHIT spam mod censorship CRAP w/ me.

        Whaddya think people? Should we go for it? I'll be happy to. Or should I wait for a second post?

        He's easy to trigger. Should we just troll him for a while?

        Barb, where are ya? You always get the best out of him. Please chime in

      • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday February 10 2020, @10:01PM (1 child)

        by tangomargarine (667) on Monday February 10 2020, @10:01PM (#956559)

        Ha, APK is still around! Some things never change.

        --
        "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @06:40AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @06:40AM (#956763)

          Except the speed of moderating his posts, apparently.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2020, @12:18AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2020, @12:18AM (#960509)

      And, you have to be aware of what the extensions are doing! If AdBlock is collecting your information, then selling it on, then AdBlock isn't doing you any good at all, right? If the addon is accepting money from advertisers to allow their ads through, you've gained nothing with the addon.

      Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

      In your examples, then AdBlock will have my information for the highest bidder, but it means that all the B, C, D, E and more companies don't have it. I'd rather a couple have it than everybody.

      Likewise, if the addon is allowing some advertisers through but blocking others, it's still an improvement. If an antibiotic "only kills 99% of pathogenic bacteria," I'd still use it if I were sick with a bacteria infection, even if 1% still gets through.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2020, @09:40AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2020, @09:40AM (#960644)

        There's nothing to stop them from selling it to multiple places, nor those places reselling it, nor those places reselling it, etc. Plus you also have to figure out the coverage of what they block, as it doesn't matter if they block 99% of companies if the one or two it doesn't has 50%+ market share.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @09:12AM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @09:12AM (#949989)

    NoScript and RequestPolicy Continued.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @06:53PM (6 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @06:53PM (#950175)

      On palemoon, those plus ublock origin (which I don't know how to use) and Adblock Latitude.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @09:39PM (5 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @09:39PM (#950248)

        You don't really want to mix two "kinds" of the same content blocker. They can interact and conflict with each other in weird ways, especially when they use the same lists/techniques that aren't perfectly in sync. In your example, uBO (in easy mode) and ABL use many of the same types of filtering techniques and will conflict. You should pick one or the other (preferably uBO, since ABL is relative garbage). Some other examples would be uMatrix and NoScript, RPC and uMatrix, AdGuard and ABP, uBO (in advanced mode) and NoScript, among others. Safe interactions would be PrivacyBadger and any of the above, NoScript and uBO (with advanced off), RPC and NoScript, ABL and NoScript, among others.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @09:43PM (4 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 28 2020, @09:43PM (#950253)

          How will they conflict? If the result is to deny a resource access to my eyes if one or the other match, I'm fine with that.

          • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @03:20AM (3 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @03:20AM (#950434)

            First we need to ignoring the fact that they can never increase the blockages as they can both can use the exact same lists for blocking and both will require resources for memory and processing time. But for examples of conflicting, they could try to inject different surrogates on the page. They could both try rewriting the CSP header to do a csp or script directive in bad ways (similar to how they used to cause problems with early WebEx versions of NoScript). Their respective user styles and DOM rewriting engines may create incompatible changes. You might get caught in a loop as each tries to do something to the DOM which then triggers the other. One could explicitly whitelist certain resources the other would block, causing it to get through unadulterated (rare but has happened). And those are the ones I came up with off the top of my head.

            For a weird example of conflicting plugins, look at the multiple bug reports of HTTPS Everywhere conflicting with uBO/ABP. It is true that it wasn't serious but they had to specifically design around the presence of the other in the same browser to avoid UA warnings.

            The various content blockers have gotten nicer to each other over the years because people use them together and reported the problems. But when they use the same blocking tactics, it is still an example of literally no positives and multiple negatives.

            • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @04:08AM (2 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @04:08AM (#950459)

              Obviously the solution is to ban all ad blocking plugins. Users just can't be trusted to install software alone.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @08:43PM (1 child)

                by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 29 2020, @08:43PM (#950831)

                Where did you get that from? I pointed out that running multiple of the same type of blocker (in this case, publicly-available filter lists and ignoring the fact that uBO has a superset of features) can cause them to conflict and provide no security benefit. They asked how they can conflict and I told them how. I don't care whether they run 2 blockers or 20 blockers of that type on their machine. But that doesn't change the fact that it is literally no benefit to do so and multiple downsides, both real and theoretical.

                And the only real reason I chimed in in the first place is to let everyone else know, as I figured those on a more technically inclined website and that a Palemoon user in particular could handle such information. But, alas, apparently one among us could not handle it.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @06:23PM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @06:23PM (#952418)

                  I'm guessing he was refering back to the attitude of Mozilla and Chrome, not you. I had a laugh on that account and I'm not giving it back if I'm wrong.

    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday February 10 2020, @09:59PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Monday February 10 2020, @09:59PM (#956556)

      Oh cool, somebody is still maintaining RequestPolicy? I thought that died years ago.

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday January 29 2020, @08:26PM (3 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 29 2020, @08:26PM (#950826)

    There are ads on the internet? Where? Been awhile since I've seen one. I don't browse much on mobile, obviously.

    I have noticed that clickbait sites that rely on ad revenue block me because of my ad blocker; cool, now I know which sites are disreputable and universally worth ignoring. I haven't missed any real content yet...

    • (Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Monday February 03 2020, @08:57PM

      by ElizabethGreene (6748) Subscriber Badge on Monday February 03 2020, @08:57PM (#953289) Journal

      I'm using the adblock plus browser on Android and it's decent. There is a notable performance penalty vs. using native Chrome, but I'll pay it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 05 2020, @04:37AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 05 2020, @04:37AM (#954058)

      Privacy Browser [f-droid.org] is my first choice on Android.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 07 2020, @08:57PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 07 2020, @08:57PM (#955387)

      Firefox with umatrix and ublock origin, not very different from desktop, really.

  • (Score: 2) by mmh on Thursday January 30 2020, @01:30AM (5 children)

    by mmh (721) on Thursday January 30 2020, @01:30AM (#950943)

    Oh I like this poll, Ads are the bane of my existence. I wish this poll was multiple choice though, I have levels of ad blocking. On my home network the DNS server on the router uses a hosts blacklist so all clients get a minimal level of protection. Then at the browser level I have uBlock, followed by uMatrix. I very rarely see ads on the internet, literally maybe twice a year.

    Here's a small script, if anyone wants an easy-set-and-forget method to setup a /etc/hosts blocklist on Linux, here ya go:
    http://xn0.co/buildhosts-laptop.sh [xn0.co]
    Make that executable and drop it in /etc/cron.weekly/.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @05:37AM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 30 2020, @05:37AM (#951049)

      You should probably fix that up. Your shebang is /bin/sh, but the script contains a bunch of things (e.g. certain keywords, certain echo flags, &redirections) that have undefined behavior. You probably want to explicitly mark it as bash or fix those. Huge chunks of code are commented out, which kind of smells. And you use obsoleted binary operators that can behave in ways you don't expect, as I saw at least one -o instead of the preferred [] || [].

      • (Score: 3, Touché) by mmh on Friday January 31 2020, @01:38AM (3 children)

        by mmh (721) on Friday January 31 2020, @01:38AM (#951538)

        I am sorry and embarrassed. But most of all, I am deeply sorry.

        Words cannot express how truly sorry I am for the anxiety, frustration and inconvenience that I caused. This is especially saddening because I brought the promise of bringing humanity back web browsing and making the experience of web browsing happier and easier for everyone. I know I failed to deliver on this promise yesterday.

        I am committed to you, Anonymous Coward, and I am taking immediate corrective steps to regain your confidence in me. I have begun putting a comprehensive plan in place to provide better and more timely information to you, more tools and resources for handling coding difficulties in the future.

        I am confident, as a result of these actions, that I will emerge as a more reliable and even more responsive scripter than ever before.

        You deserved better—a lot better—from me yesterday. Nothing is more important than regaining your trust and I hope you will give us the opportunity to welcome you again soon and provide you the positive experience you have come to expect from me.

        Sincerely,

        mmh

        • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @07:58AM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 31 2020, @07:58AM (#951696)

          Yeah, that came off too gruff. I apologize for my inability to properly sandwich that criticism. That script is pretty neat, especially in its use of sed. I was just trying to express concern of those issues in light of the fact that you suggested random people put it on random machines of unknown configuration in a set-and-forget situation as a privileged user. I probably don't have to tell you that bad things can result from undefined behavior in the run in the "right" situation as root. In my attempt to bring those issues to your attention while dealing with a time crunch that happened to fall on my lap while I was reading the script over, I did not take your feelings into account. And for that, I again apologize.

          • (Score: 5, Funny) by Gaaark on Friday January 31 2020, @10:35PM (1 child)

            by Gaaark (41) on Friday January 31 2020, @10:35PM (#952011) Journal

            and I apologise as well....simply because I AM CANADIAN!

            --
            --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @03:18AM

              by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 01 2020, @03:18AM (#952155)

              Don't be so coy. We all know that is just a fake affect for something more diabolical. Otherwise, y'all would apologize because your beer sucks [youtube.com].

              (It's Canadian Bacon [wikipedia.org] by Michael Moore)

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 02 2020, @05:15PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 02 2020, @05:15PM (#952753)

    On my android phone (which sees more use a hotspot than a browser) I use DNS66, on my home network I use browser built-in ad/script-blocking with sandboxing, and filtering at the router (I don't block ads/trackers etc at the router because sometimes I need to view those things).

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03 2020, @01:14AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 03 2020, @01:14AM (#952961)

      Try IceCat for android. It's a Firefox clone. You can load Firefox plugins from the Mozilla site.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 10 2020, @09:56PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 10 2020, @09:56PM (#956554)

        ...why not just use Firefox?

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by nicdoye on Monday February 03 2020, @12:01PM (1 child)

    by nicdoye (3908) on Monday February 03 2020, @12:01PM (#953091) Homepage

    Currently using Brave https://brave.com [brave.com] as a browser. Has enough built in.

    --
    I code because I can
    • (Score: 2) by Kymation on Wednesday February 12 2020, @09:43PM

      by Kymation (1047) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 12 2020, @09:43PM (#957415)

      You don't need multiple ad blockers if your browser doesn't even request the ads in the first place. Kudos to the Brave coders for this no-nonsense approach.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04 2020, @02:48PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 04 2020, @02:48PM (#953558)

    I only use Gopher and anonymous FTP lists.

    Fuck all that newfangled stuff! And fuck you Tim Berners-Lee!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @06:51AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @06:51AM (#956766)

      You must not remember how people used the i and h types in gopher, along with not remembering the banner, greeting, and exit messages in FTP.

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 09 2020, @12:11AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 09 2020, @12:11AM (#955837)

    87 votes for uBlock Origin from Boomers who surf the information superhighway from their one rig with three monitors in the den of their giant mansion.

    Me, I work for a living. On a daily basis I use more than ten different devices at my workstation: desktops, laptops, mobiles, and embedded systems. All have web browsers, and I do not have the luxury of installing ad blocking crap on every device that crosses my desk.

    So, Boomers, I voted for "ignore them" because here in the real world, your obsession with ad blocking is a waste of my time and money.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 09 2020, @03:46AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 09 2020, @03:46AM (#955890)

      That's neat. I also work for a living "in the real world" and uBlock Origin is installed on all the machines by IT. They also do filtering at the parameter using DNS and other tricks. With malvertising, APTs, and other dangers out there, the defense in depth is a must.

      • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 09 2020, @05:31AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 09 2020, @05:31AM (#955916)

        In other words, IT blocks ads for you, and you're a lazy asshole who collects a paycheck for warming a chair.

        Schedule any meetings lately? Parasite.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 09 2020, @09:30AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 09 2020, @09:30AM (#955974)

          Not that I can think of. Scheduling meetings isn't something I do often. In that sense, it is in the same category as exposing my entire office's network while browsing the web to code and exploits by unknown third parties actively trying to pwn it or phish credentials.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 09 2020, @02:59AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 09 2020, @02:59AM (#955873)

    browsers: ublock origin and umatrix on all browsers capable of running them

    boundary firewall: has a dodgy_hosts file, runs DNS blocking (all LAN DNS requests are transparently redirected to dnsmasq running on it) and has a large shitlist of dodgy IP ranges and hosts blocked via iptables.

    desktop machines: have dodgy_hosts files and firewalls with shitlist of dodgy IP ranges, synced from the master files on the boundary firewall.

    laptops: dodgy_hosts file, firewall with shitlist of dodgy IP ranges *and* copy of the dns blocking files for dnsmasq synced from the master files on the boundary firewall. The laptops are set up to handle their own DNS, when they're on my LAN, the queries get transparently redirected to my DNS servers, on a.n.other network they'll query the root servers etc, and even if they get transparently redirected there, there's still a list of close on 77,000 dubious hosts and domains which resolve to various 127.0.0.XX addresses which they'll prefer over any shit served to them.

    android phones: firewalls with shitlists of dodgy hostnames (painfully added manually on the go as the fuckers appear), browser javascript enabled only on specific sites, ublock origin installed on icecat, hosts file on the rooted phones, working on playing around with running dnsmasq on the rooted phones to replicate the laptop setup, but android being android....

    It's always culture shock when I use someone else's machine to browse t'interwibblez...so many feckin adverts...how do people put up with them?...of course, once the fsckers go full-on DoH for sneakily directly resolving their own/sponsored 'safe' adshit slinging domains within the browser, it'll be a case of back to square one again..

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 09 2020, @03:21AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 09 2020, @03:21AM (#955880)

      once the fsckers go full-on DoH for sneakily directly resolving their own/sponsored 'safe' adshit slinging domains within the browser, it'll be a case of back to square one again..

      It will be your opportunity to develop a DoH-blocking app, you adshit nutter. Once you have OVER ONE BEEELEON USERS, you will be a big techturd just like Fuckerberg. Get started now, fuckface. Those DoH-based ads will not block themselves.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Nuke on Sunday February 09 2020, @10:53PM (1 child)

    by Nuke (3162) on Sunday February 09 2020, @10:53PM (#956190)

    Adnauseam

    It blocks the ad but sends a false click to the advertisers to poison their well and earns money for the website anyway.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @06:31AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 11 2020, @06:31AM (#956761)

      I don't get the point of AdNauseam. Whether you click on everything you recognize as an ad or nothing you recognize as an ad, it seems like you provide the same amount of information about your preferences. In addition, clicking on the ads generates more risk as you'd have to download the actual ad (are you sure the protocol stack is bug free?), possibly run the ad's JavaScript (bugs there or in the engine?), run the page's JavaScript (bugs there?), follow redirect chain (bugs there?), an possibly other things (bugs everywhere?). All of that opens you up to more risks than blocking them and not doing it renders your real clicks different than non-clicks anyway. I don't really see the benefit especially in light of the additional risk, but if I'm missing something in my understanding, which wouldn't be the first time, I'd like to know.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Saturday February 15 2020, @06:37PM

    by PinkyGigglebrain (4458) on Saturday February 15 2020, @06:37PM (#958567)

    Noscript blocks the crap and lets me control who runs what javascript in my browser.

    Sites load faster and no adds unless I allow them to help support the website.

    If a web site doesn't even display without javascript I go somewhere else.

    --
    "Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
  • (Score: 1) by spiraldancing on Sunday February 16 2020, @08:02AM

    by spiraldancing (5894) on Sunday February 16 2020, @08:02AM (#958732)

    I disagree with the nature of the poll.

    I use a combination of uBlock Origin, uMatrix and NoScript ... and when the ads stop trying to "build a history" for me, I'll stop blocking them.

    --
    Lets go exploring.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2020, @03:21PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2020, @03:21PM (#960298)

    Adblock Plus + Hosts file + Ad filtering VPN service + Ghostery + Decentraleyes + cooke blocking + periodic home make cookie cleaner scripts for those that I can't block but don't want to keep around.
    Death to all (tracking) ads! :-)

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