I have been using Wipr for about two weeks now and it seems to work pretty good. I have not had any problems with it yet.
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Where do you get content blockers for OS X?
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I have been using Wipr for about two weeks now and it seems to work pretty good. I have not had any problems with it yet.
uBlock Origin! Adblock has some kind of contract with Google, so it has to allow some advertisement, I read it somewhere.
It's called "acceptable ads" and is not only with Google. There is also an option in the settings to opt out of acceptable ads. These three for sure I know have that, "Adguard", "Adblock" and "AdblockPlus" and all allow you in the settings to opt out of acceptable ads.
Install Ghostery always, pick either uBlock or AdBlock Plus
I find uBlock sometimes too strict, it destroys formatting on some sites, even causing a blank page.
Adblock is better. However, I don't like its policies, it's a commercial company.
Adblock Plus on iOS is IMHO a complete joke. I leaves a lot of ads through. For iOS I'm using a combination
of two ad blockers (1Blocker and Admob).
I quit using Ghostery long ago because of this. And the same with DNT.
https://blog.malwarebytes.org/privacy-2/2015/09/ghostery-a-tool-that-stop-trackers/
ELI5: Prior to Safari's new content-blocking API, browser extensions would detect if a resource was loaded, and then either:
modify the css so it disappears,
inject scripts to modify a website's behavior,
or prevent scripts from executing
This method requires a lot of invasive and complex javascript running on your page to dynamically modify the behavior of a website. Many of these extensions (in the beginning) used lots of additional resources by including libraries and javascript that would slow down load time and increase memory consumption. This problem became worse as companies fought back against these ad-blockers by making their ad's more difficult to block, so more code was needed.. and this caused a split to occur:
1) Advertisers began to 'work with' adblockers (secret whitelists), and advertisers began building their own blockers with catchy logos and good marketing strategies (ghostery is the best example).
2) Indie-dev, open-source, adblockers (like ublock(origin)) that gave users complete control, focused on decreasing resources and memory consumption, and relied on 3rd party lists updated weekly, with a flexible syntax that let them combine multiple ecosystems.
Some aspects of #1 aren't bad. Adblockers with whitelists forced advertisers to fundamentally change how they do ads to get on the whitelist (unless you're super rich and powerful). But it also represents a compromise, where there can be some ad revenue, and it's not the worst thing in the world. Ghostery, on the other hand, is fascinating to me. They are openly working with advertiser, it is no secret, it is explicit. But, they're giving advertisers information about users who are blocking ads that benefit the advertisers. They claim it's to make 'ads better', but, the reality is the information ghostery has access to is far more valuable than ad revenue. Ghostery doesn't lie, at all, but they have a powerful adblocker, because they have the consent of the advertisers and they're giving them something valuable. It may be harmless, semi-anonymous, non-creepy, just people wanting to make money, and supposedly you can opt out. But, it's completely based on trust, and there's no guarantee that the practices will remain consistent, and we have no idea what level of activity is being tracked, so.. I'll be optimistic and assume Ghostery is good and a compromise.
Option #2 is the death of advertising. It's their worst nightmare. It fundamentally gives us leverage over them, but we might inadvertently just be screwing over the people in middle, the ones who build the website we enjoy using. So, I support it, it's obviously the better choice for consumers, and it will basically force websites to make money via other means (such as donations).
So, Safari content blocking is just a JSON file - a list of websites with some elements and regex, that's all. It cannot be used to invade privacy, it literally can only block content. Safari decides what can loaded or shown on a page in the networking / rendering layer of the pipeline (that's my best guess). So it's blocking the content one layer before a normal extension would, and it's doing it without custom code by the developer. That's why a page load time will decrease from 7 seconds to 1 second, because the resources aren't even being loaded. With a normal blocker, it can stop the execution, but in general, the website get's a lot closer to loading the resource, and in most cases it's loaded and not displayed. Safari is like.. 'I ain't even gonna try to load that **** and I'll cache the page without that resource'.
But.. if a website is expecting a javascript event to occur which signals an ad was observed, loaded, or clicked, that's not programmable in a JSON file. So, the website will break. And that's what we see occurring in many situations with the new safari blockers. So, although they're fundamentally more powerful, it's trivially easy for a website to 'protest' a content blocker by simply not loading their site if an was blocked.
modify the css so it disappears,
inject scripts to modify a website's behavior,
or prevent scripts from executing
This method requires a lot of invasive and complex javascript running on your page to dynamically modify the behavior of a website. Many of these extensions (in the beginning) used lots of additional resources by including libraries and javascript that would slow down load time and increase memory consumption. This problem became worse as companies fought back against these ad-blockers by making their ad's more difficult to block, so more code was needed.. and this caused a split to occur:
1) Advertisers began to 'work with' adblockers (secret whitelists), and advertisers began building their own blockers with catchy logos and good marketing strategies (ghostery is the best example).
2) Indie-dev, open-source, adblockers (like ublock(origin)) that gave users complete control, focused on decreasing resources and memory consumption, and relied on 3rd party lists updated weekly, with a flexible syntax that let them combine multiple ecosystems.
Some aspects of #1 aren't bad. Adblockers with whitelists forced advertisers to fundamentally change how they do ads to get on the whitelist (unless you're super rich and powerful). But it also represents a compromise, where there can be some ad revenue, and it's not the worst thing in the world. Ghostery, on the other hand, is fascinating to me. They are openly working with advertiser, it is no secret, it is explicit. But, they're giving advertisers information about users who are blocking ads that benefit the advertisers. They claim it's to make 'ads better', but, the reality is the information ghostery has access to is far more valuable than ad revenue. Ghostery doesn't lie, at all, but they have a powerful adblocker, because they have the consent of the advertisers and they're giving them something valuable. It may be harmless, semi-anonymous, non-creepy, just people wanting to make money, and supposedly you can opt out. But, it's completely based on trust, and there's no guarantee that the practices will remain consistent, and we have no idea what level of activity is being tracked, so.. I'll be optimistic and assume Ghostery is good and a compromise.
Option #2 is the death of advertising. It's their worst nightmare. It fundamentally gives us leverage over them, but we might inadvertently just be screwing over the people in middle, the ones who build the website we enjoy using. So, I support it, it's obviously the better choice for consumers, and it will basically force websites to make money via other means (such as donations).
So, Safari content blocking is just a JSON file - a list of websites with some elements and regex, that's all. It cannot be used to invade privacy, it literally can only block content. Safari decides what can loaded or shown on a page in the networking / rendering layer of the pipeline (that's my best guess). So it's blocking the content one layer before a normal extension would, and it's doing it without custom code by the developer. That's why a page load time will decrease from 7 seconds to 1 second, because the resources aren't even being loaded. With a normal blocker, it can stop the execution, but in general, the website get's a lot closer to loading the resource, and in most cases it's loaded and not displayed. Safari is like.. 'I ain't even gonna try to load that **** and I'll cache the page without that resource'.
But.. if a website is expecting a javascript event to occur which signals an ad was observed, loaded, or clicked, that's not programmable in a JSON file. So, the website will break. And that's what we see occurring in many situations with the new safari blockers. So, although they're fundamentally more powerful, it's trivially easy for a website to 'protest' a content blocker by simply not loading their site if an was blocked.
I also like uBlock Origin. But it doesn't work with Safari
I have uBlock working in tandem with Wipr on Safar 9.01 & OS X 10.11.1 blocks absolutely everything, unless I "whitelist" it
Q-6
Sounds like these ad blockers have been bought off by corporate America. The only acceptable ads are No Ads.
Ghostery is not really doing anything malicious, equally you do have to dig about on their site to see how they fund the extension/application. Personally the fact that Ghostery is owned by Evidon is the bigger concern as it`s clearly a conflict of interest although Evidon explicitly state that this is not the case for them. Call me jaded, however advertising and privacy rarely go "hand in hand" the bigger question is do you trust Evidon?
moving on, same as all software you install, it comes down to that one basic factor "trust". If you really want to get into it, you will need the likes of "Little Snitch" equally to analyse each and every outbound connection can be, and is time consuming, more so with 10.11.
For blocking I personally rate uBlock & Wipr for the following reasons;
uBlock
Is first and foremost open source, is highly customisable, also has advanced dynamic modes. Has no business relationships is first and formally a privacy tool, not solely an AD Blocker
Wipr
Is simple in the extreme, once again no obvious business agenda, in isolation works very well. Only downside is no "Whitelist" equally I am ok with that, as my objective is to block 100% of non requested fields.
I have seen uBlock stall on Safari 9.01 & OS X 10.11, however with the inclusion of Wipr no issues observed. Whatever was depreciating uBlock, Wipr seems to deal with, nor does running both "blockers" in tandem appear to overly reduce performance. On my 10.10.5 system I sole use uBlock as I have not observed and depreciation of the extension.
Q-6
I sometimes found uBlock would stall and not block thereby giving Facebook's trackers all my website locations. Ad companies are a menace to society and the sooner they are eradicated from this planet the better for man.
Try Wipr, it certainly stops Ad`s, although I am unsure of it`s capabilities for Trackers, using both will kill everything. On the internet I am only interested in what I want to see. All this tracking and unrequested Ad`s is nothing more than an intrusion into one`s privacy.
If a company is not capable of making good with it`s products without ramming it down your throat, then they don't deserve business. All these tracking mechanisms should be arbitrarily banned, in the mean time I am happy to it make as difficult as humanly possible to do so...
Q-6
I use bind9 as content blocker by using the name server as authoritative to almost all known advertising domains.
Of course it's no public DNS, but only running local on my Mac on the loopback interface. It's more work, that's for sure, and you really have to know what you're doing, but imho the result is worth all the hassle...
Of course it's no public DNS, but only running local on my Mac on the loopback interface. It's more work, that's for sure, and you really have to know what you're doing, but imho the result is worth all the hassle...
True, however there isn't too many alternatives with that level of customisation. And now uBlock is starting to be problematic with 10.11.1 so the search continues...
Q-6