Basic Safari Privacy extension questions

[stanw]

1. Is there an issue with having too many privacy extensions installed in Safari or Chrome?
2. Anyone know the difference between Adblock and Adblock Plus?

 

[Weaselboy]

Yes there is. Adblockers like the two you mentioned have long lists of blocked sites and each time you load a web site the extension has to parse through that list to see what it should block. The more block lists and the longer the block lists the more it slows down the loading of the web page. By running two adblock extensions at the same time you are now doubling the RAM and CPU time consumed by those extensions and also likely slowing web page loads because now both extensions are trying to parse their block lists.

Those are both just different extensions made by different developers that bascially do the same thing. Adblock was recently sold and the rumors are it was sold to the company that owns AdBlock Plus.

uBlock is a pretty popular alterntive if you don't like either of the AdBlock versions.

 

[stanw]

Are there recommended combinations ad blocking / privacy extensions to use to avoid redundancy, while maximizing the benefits of the different extensions ads, tracking scripts and super cookies, etc

Thanks.

 

[Weaselboy]

Are there recommended combinations ad blocking / privacy extensions to use to avoid redundancy, while maximizing the benefits of the different extensions ads, tracking scripts and super cookies, etc

Thanks.

I think the jury is still out on what is the best overall solution. I have turned off uBlock and am now using the content blocker Purify. It is not as configurable as uBlock, but does basic blocking that I want and can whitelist sites I frequent and want to support.

I think where we may end up is the new content blockers will be faster and more simplistic with fewer options, and the older extensions will be a bit slower, but much more configurable.

 

[Wheelie4]

I think the jury is still out on what is the best overall solution. I have turned off uBlock and am now using the content blocker Purify. It is not as configurable as uBlock, but does basic blocking that I want and can whitelist sites I frequent and want to support.

I think where we may end up is the new content blockers will be faster and more simplistic with fewer options, and the older extensions will be a bit slower, but much more configurable.

I was unaware Purify had been released for the Mac yet. I would love to get my hands on it. For the past 2 weeks I have been running Wipr content blocker. No issues with it so far for me but I read that some had a couple of little problems with YouTube videos. :O

 

[Weaselboy]

I was unaware Purify had been released for the Mac yet. I would love to get my hands on it. For the past 2 weeks I have been running Wipr content blocker. No issues with it so far for me but I read that some had a couple of little problems with YouTube videos. :O

Ack... I apologize. I confused myself. I am using Wipr on OS X and Purify on iOS. Sorry for my confusion.

 

[Sko]

Ghostery is also worth a recommendation.

 

[Wheelie4]

Ack... I apologize. I confused myself. I am using Wipr on OS X and Purify on iOS. Sorry for my confusion.

Haha, no problem. I stay dazed and confused 24/7.

 

[Wheelie4]

Ghostery is also worth a recommendation.

I think you should take a gander at this Ghostery review by Malwarebytes.

https://blog.malwarebytes.org/privacy-2/2015/09/ghostery-a-tool-that-stop-trackers/