Hi everybody - I know that the topic of migrating the Tor Browser on Tails from AdBlock Plus (ABP) to a faster and more modern plugin comes up regularly, so i'll keep this short and get to why Adblock Plus should be replaced with uBlock Origin (uBO) and why it's ready now:
1. uBO is now in Debian packages: https://packages.qa.debian.org/u/ublock-origin.html# In previous threads this was the largest obstacle. 2. gorhill, the original developer of uBO (and the original uBlock) is willing to help out however he can to see the integration into Tails happen - he is on this mailing list now. To run through previous discussion points again: 3. uBO isn't compromised by a business model that allows some advertisers to 'pay for play' and bypass blocking (altho this is disabled in Tails) 4. uBO is faster, a lot faster, and a lot more memory efficient: uBO doesn't insert or alter DOM elements like ad blockers do, so the per-tab memory footprint is smaller than the original site: https://www.raymond.cc/blog/10-ad-blocking-extensions-tested-for-best-performance/view-all/ https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-vs.-ABP:-efficiency-compared 5. It is not just an ad blocker - advanced mode with dynamic filtering can implement NoScript (with website scopes, so if you approve cloudflare.com on one domain it won't globally approve it), same with Request Policy like rules, and implementing HTTPSEverywhere in rules (or similar redirects to take users to .onion versions of websites). Dynamic filtering would allow a default block mode for all third-party resources and all scripts while allowing a whitelist of sites where non-third-party javascript could be enabled: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering Example default deny ruleset: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-default-deny:-useful-rulesets I'm familiar with the "whitelists can be fingerprinted" argument, but it is resolved here as a third-party site can't check what the user has blocked or allowed because of the rule scopes. uBO has an emphasis on supporting and loading privacy and tracking oriented rulelists, along with malware rules - so it is more suited to a privacy-oriented browser and operating system than a simple ad blocker. I think this issue, which talks about ABP being replaced with uBO should be reopened: https://labs.riseup.net/code/issues/9833 We can put together what the integration would look like and how it should behave by default. I also plan on advocating that Tor Browser should switch to uBO (and away from NoScript and HTTPS-Everywhere), which is successful would bring the browser fingerprints between Tails and Tor Browser back together. Thanks Nik _______________________________________________ Tails-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mailman.boum.org/listinfo/tails-dev To unsubscribe from this list, send an empty email to [email protected].
