From Newsgroup: alt.comp.software.firefox
Replying to several posts simultaneously (and Firefox newsgroup only)
Marion wrote:
On Sun, 24 Aug 2025 09:48:33 +0100, Jim the Geordie wrote :
Adblock started allowing certain ads through:
"Starting with version 2.0, Adblock Plus started allowing "acceptable
ads" by default,[72] with acceptable ad standards being set by The
Acceptable Ads Committee.[73]
It's been a while since last looked at AdBlock Plus, but if I remember correctly, their handling of "Acceptable Ads" was to enable as a
default, but where users could choose to opt out. I don't know if that's changed. On the other hand, a news report indicates that the developers
are being sued in Germany, because the plaintiffs claim that AdBlock
Plus is disrupting their business, and using copyright violation as a justification.
From a user standpoint, I want to block as many ads as possible, but I
can appreciate where the Adblock Plus developer is, in trying to balance conflicting expectations.
My two cents... bearing in mind I never used extensions until early July
when Epic Privacy Browser went bust... I'm building two sets of DIY privacy browsers where I've settled (currently) on almost a score of extensions
(not counting VPN extensions) which are the following currently for the Chromium side of the family (given it was easier than the Mozilla side).
Browser: Brave and/or Ungoogled Chromium (LibreFox and/or MullVad)
1. Canvas Blocker - Fingerprint Protect : version 0_2_2
2. ClearURLs : version 1_26_0
3. Cookie AutoDelete : version 3_8_2
4. CthulhuJs (Anti-Fingerprint) : version 8_0_6
5. Decentraleyes : version 3_0_0
6. Extension Manager : version 9_5_2
7. Font Fingerprint Defender : version 0_1_6
8. LocalCDN : version 2_6_79
9. Location Guard (V3) : version 3_0_0
10. Privacy Badger : version 2025_5_30
11. Referer Control : version 1_35
12. Skip Redirect : version 2_3_6
13. StayInTab : version 1_0
14. Trace - Online Tracking Protection : version 3_0_6
15. uBlock Origin : version 1_65_0
16. User-Agent Switcher and Manager : version 0_6_4
17. WebRTC Control : version 0_3_3
18. NoScript is useful, but I find it a PITA so it's disabled for now.
Of this set, I use Cookie AutoDelete, Decentraleyes, Privacy Badger,
uBlock origin, a different user agent switcher and NoScript, but I'm not familiar with the others.
I really like Cookie AutoDelete (in conjunction with having Firefox set
to delete all cookies at the end of a session), and with this, I find it
a lot easier than trying to decide which sites should be allowed to set cookies or not.
I agree that NoScript is an acquired taste -- it definitely helps block unwanted scripting (not just tracking) but can be disruptive to sites,
of constantly having to review permissions. Permanent whitelisting can
be a good idea, but I've found with some scripting hosts, it's necessary
to whitelist at least part of the time, especially Google-hosted ones
such as googletagmanager or gstatic. A lot depends on how a site is
coded, whether scripting is essential or not.
Two others that I find that I like:
- Clear Browsing Data allows me one-button ability to clear cache and
cookies on demand, without having to dig further into Firefox configs.
- I Don't Care About Cookies suppresses the constant pop-ups of Cookie notifications that is required by the EU. To me, cookie notifications
are nothing but extra noise. I assume that sites are setting cookies,
and with aggressive cookie deletion, I don't need notifications. With
NoScript active, I rarely see cookie notifications, and I also have cookielaw.org permanently blacklisted. Although I think that some sites
may do their own cookie notifications, many do that through
third-parties such as cookielaw. I'm sure that there are others that I
haven't yet identified.
I notice that PrivacyPossum isn't included here, but I don't think
that's an issue. I looked at that briefly recently, and while the anti-fingerprinting aspect is attractive, I didn't see that it did
anything useful for me.
The question came up from Mr. Man-wai Chang about Adblock Plus.
While there will always be overlap when you have a score of extensions,
a. uBlock Origin is more efficient (apparently)
b. It's said to be more powerful in supporting advanced rule creation
c. It's said to support dynamic & cosmetic filtering
c. Critically, it doesn't have an "acceptable ads" program
d. And it's often considered more actively maintained
Since there is a large amount of overlap, I left AdBlock Plus out of the
mix of privacy extensions that I'm testing for the DIY privacy browser(s).
Ultimately Adblock Plus and uBlock Origin mostly overlap in what they
do. If you have one, you don't really need the other.
Side Note: The VPN extension test covering a score of supposedly free, ad free, registration free VPN extensions is still a work in progress
covering, so far, the following successful & failed VPN extensions:
I'm generally unfriendly to free VPN, especially the ones that run only
as browser extensions. If a provider isn't charging for services, then
they have to find other sources of revenue, and frequently that's
related to advertising, or some other form of monetizing user data.
The only ones that I trust are ones that offer a reduced-capacity
entry-level tier that is unpaid, and where the purpose of unpaid is
promotion of upgrades to paid tiers of service. And I'm only willing to
use providers that protect the entire computer, not just a single
browser (or in the case of Firefox, a single profile). Since I several browsers simultaneously, as well as multiple Firefox profiles, the
protection provided by an extension is quite limited for my use.
I'm generally unfriendly to free VPN, especially the ones that run only
as browser extensions. If a provider isn't charging for services, then
they have to find other sources of revenue, and frequently that's
related to advertising, or some other form of monetizing user data.
The only ones that I trust are ones that offer a reduced-capacity
entry-level tier that is unpaid, and where the purpose of unpaid is
promotion of upgrades to paid tiers of service. And I'm only willing to
use providers that protect the entire computer, not just a single
browser (or in the case of Firefox, a single profile). Since I several browsers simultaneously, as well as multiple Firefox profiles, the
protection provided by an extension is quite limited for my use.
Correction: I correct an earlier assessment that all the VPN extensions
"slow down" drastically within days; I think some of that is due to the plethora of privacy-baswed extensions - so I switched the testing over to testing instead the free,adfree,registrationfree system-wide VPNs with a free-adfree-regfree socks5 proxy (Psiphon) and, for non-browser
applications, a free-adfree-regfree proxifier such as ProxyCAp64/FreeCap.
I don't think it's surprising that use of too many extensions is likely
to affect performance, and after you get past the handful of most commonly-used things, I think there is high probability that you're
going to start seeing significant amounts of redundancy, of multiple
tools trying to filter the same stuff simultaneously, but where all the
tools are consuming resources to do so, even if they're not actively conflicting with each other.
I think that it's also important to account for a point of diminishing returns, where adding one more tool to the set isn't going to produce corresponding benefit for the amount of resources spent. I don't believe
that it's possible to do something air-tight -- there's always going to
be something unwanted that may get through, if not today, then probably
the day after tomorrow. Do you really want to spend all of your time
trying to find and seal that last hole (which may not stay sealed for
very long)? Or is there a point where you can accept "good enough is
good enough", especially in light of a realistic threat assessment of
who you're protecting yourself from, including accounting for their capabilities and intentions?
Smith
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