µBlock dynamic filtering: default deny

[cantlin]

As the author was kind enough to pick us as an example, here's some background on what some of those requests are doing.

hits.theguardian.com points to our Omniture implementation, which is the main tracking suite used for macro-level reporting (like when we say we have X unique monthly browsers, or whatever). So if you want to be invisible to that, leave it blocked.

ophan.theguardian.com points to our own analytics tool, Ophan, which does things like tracks whether you "read" the article. It's for journalists to work out if people like their stuff. All the views of the data are aggregated, but if an analyst really wanted to they could go write some SQL to look at the behavior of individual cookies. So if you want to be invisible to that, leave it blocked. A quick Google [0] will turn up lots more about Ophan and how it works.

Our only calls out to Facebook and Twitter are to retrieve share counts for the current URL (besides articles with embedded tweets, for now). These are probably relatively safe to unblock, but if that information doesn't interest you they're equally safe to block.

api.nextgen.guardianapps.co.uk is handling most Guardian stuff that gets ajaxed onto the page, like suggestions for what to read next. It's pretty harmless and required for a bunch of functionality. All the guim stuff is obviously just static assets.

It would be cute if there was some way of us hinting to the plugin which domains were needed to not break the site, though likely impractical in the real world.

[0] https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=ophan%20guardian

[mintplant]

> Our only calls out to Facebook and Twitter are to retrieve share counts for the current URL... These are probably relatively safe to unblock

Wouldn't this expose you to tracking by Facebook and Twitter? I would think people are more interested in blocking third-party tracking than first-party.

Thanks for the detailed explanation either way!

[ndesaulniers]

> It would be cute if there was some way of us hinting to the plugin which domains were needed to not break the site

No advertiser or site looking to cash in on ads would abuse that.

[gorhill]

> some way of us hinting to the plugin which domains were needed to not break the site:

I had collated this so far to mostly un-break the site -- for viewing at least:

    www.theguardian.com guardianapps.co.uk * noop
    www.theguardian.com guim.co.uk * noop
    www.theguardian.com theguardian.tv * noop

Whenever I un-break myself a site, I add the proper rules in there: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-de...

There were 16 3rd-party root domains I found were not needed [1]. Probably fonts.googleapis.com would make the site looks better, but it's up to users whether they want to let Google know they have been visiting what article on the Guardian.

[1] adnxs.com criteo.com doubleclick.net fonts.googleapis.com google.com googleadservices.com googlesyndication.com googletagservices.com gstatic.com imrworldwide.com krxd.net mathtag.com moatads.com ophan.co.uk outbrain.com revsci.net scorecardresearch.com

[lloeki]

> It would be cute if there was some way of us hinting to the plugin which domains were needed to not break the site, though likely impractical in the real world.

Sounds like RFC 3514, only negated.

[username223]

Denying 3rd-party resources by default is nice, but definitely experts-only. Pages will break in weird ways when half their rat's nests of JavaScript are missing, and it will take some coding knowledge to figure out which parts are necessary. I may switch to this myself, but I think I'll keep telling friends and family to use Ghostery

[kmfrk]

Ghostery breaks so much stuff, I don't know how people can bother. I've found that Privacy Badger does a great job of blocking third-party tools in a way that rarely breaks anything - in which case it's easy to turn off.

That and Ad Muncher for Windows.

[Redoubts]

Reminds me a lot of the first time using NoScript. Figuring out which domains added functionality, and which just unleashed another tree of third party domains that may or may not unlock the content. Fun, for certain definitions of the word.

[gorhill]

The feature is available only to those enabling "I am an advanced user".

[wnevets]

I still havent figured out how to unblock resources with ublock.

[mbil]

In the "options" page for the Chrome extension there's a whitelist tab.

[gorhill]

"unblock resources" is too vague, can't provide an accurate answer.

[quadrangle]

You need to turn on advanced features if you want to do more than unblock everything from a site.

[p4bl0]

I don't know RequestPolicy but I've been using μBlock instead of ABP + Ghostery for a few weeks and I'm quite satisfied.

[webwanderings]

µBlock or Ghostery, whoever comes up with the tool to block garbage on mobile devices (preferably Chrome), will be a winner!

[mintplant]

Ghostery supports Firefox for Android [1]. For µBlock, there are two tickets open on GitHub [2,3] about Firefox for Android support.

Unfortunately, Chrome for Android doesn't support extensions [4]. But if you have a rooted device, you can block ads/trackers/etc. across all apps via AdAway [5], which manages a custom HOSTS file for you.

[1] https://www.ghostery.com/en/download

[2] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/524

[3] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/556

[4] https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/faq

[5] https://sufficientlysecure.org/index.php/adaway/

[lolwebkit]

I would pay good money to have this problem fixed!

[_asummers]

I can't quite tell: is this a complementary or overlapping feature to µMatrix, from the same developer? As an aside, I have noticed much better browser performance with the µ plugins as opposed to things like ABP. Keep up the good work!

[Afforess]

I was under the impression µBlock was a fork of uMatrix, made simpler for users.

[lawl]

Okay, I'm probably stupid. This would allow me to throw away NoScript, Disconnect and Adblock.

But I can't figure out how to enable deny by default mode?! (Yes I have advanced mode enabled)

[maxerickson]

There's a tiny little + by the "Requests Blocked" label on the Button panel. Click that.

Then red the left side of the top five boxes (images and scripts and the like).

If I understand correctly, it's not really a mode, it's just several broad filters. 0.8.5.7 on Firefox doesn't have an 'all' that I can see.

[ordinary]

I don't know if uBlock works the same way RequestPolicy does, but RP is not a replacement for NoScript. You may want to load images from a host but not allow that host to run Javascript or Flash: https://www.requestpolicy.com/faq.html#faq-noscript

[mmebane]

Does uBlock provide any way to write shims/surrogates? Sites often break because they just can't deal with certain JS libraries being missing, but there are many cases where it looks like just providing a stub implementation would be enough.

[MindTooth]

Enabled default to deny last night. And I actually think it works great! Yes, some sites, are broken, but with some tinkering around, it works.

This will be my default setup from now on..

[bourbon]

So with this, I no longer need Ghost and Adblock?

[clarkm]

Yep, I just switched. I initially made the jump solely because of uBlock's performance claims, but I have to say, it already seems much better overall than the haphazard Ghostery + Adblock combination I had before.

[owly]

Just did this. µBlock does seem faster than the ghostery/adblock combo. I've also enabled Spam404 and Dan Pollock's hosts and everything is perfect so far.

[unknownian]

The question is: is it more resource-efficient than RequestPolicy?

[codygman]

Probably?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9018229

[beagle3]

Policeman is like RequestPolicy, only much better (and it imports RequestPolicy's rules). I haven't tried uBlock/uMatrix yet, but if you like RequestPolicy do give Policeman a try.

[bhouston]

Does ublock still block crash reporters like newrelic and self hosted party statistics like piwik?

PS, I had major issues on two mainstream travel sites with ublock. It made then unusable with ublocksl's default settings.

[gorhill]

Using EasyPrivacy results in piwik being blocked, yes, regardless whether EasyPrivacy is used in uBlock, ABP, or whatever other blocker. I suggested you to bring the issue to EasyPrivacy maintainers if you think it's wrong[1], but by all appearances your grudge is solely aimed at uBlock.

[1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/564#issuecomment-70...

[username223]

Do you want it to block first-party trackers? I am much more tolerant of trackers (and ads) if they are per-site rather than being run by a few huge data-gatherers, as there's much less privacy impact that way.

[bsilvereagle]

Piwki would be fine if it was hosted on a subdomain of the first party domain.

If you visit test.com, piwki.test.com would work. However, piwik.not-test.com would be blocked.

[Max_Mustermann]

This kind of questions are not really expected or wished for on Hacker News, AFAIK. I would try the subreddit /r/techsupport : http://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport

[randomuserhello]

still not able to block youtube ads, thanks, but no thanks. I´ll stick with adblock edge.

[skrause]

I have never seen a single YouTube ad with uBlock and Chrome.

[Nexxxeh]

>I´ll stick with adblock edge.

Well, you can use what you want. We have no vested interest.

>still not able to block youtube ads, thanks, but no thanks.

But you're wrong, of course. And you've not given enough information for people to accurately help you, if they wanted to do so despite your tone.

On both Chrome and on Opera, with uBlock I don't get YouTube adverts. (Albeit with some more filter tickboxes ticked, which may or may not make a difference.)

If you want to try and get uBlock blocking your YouTube adverts, I'm sure lots of us would be willing assist. More so if you weren't an ass about it.

Edit: I'm using HTML5 instead of Flash, that could be the key difference.

[gorhill]

I believe Safari/Youtube/Flash won't block ads. But Safari/Youtube/HTML5 does.

Reference: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/issues/706#issuecomment-73...

[quadrangle]

You must be missing some of the block lists (or just speculating). The amount of stuff that uBlock handles is the same as Adblock Edge.

[mitchty]

youtube-dl fixes all ads on youtube. And gives you a backup to boot! win/win really.

[Xylemon]

Did you enable the 3rd Party Filters?