Here's a detailed view on Angler exploit kit which spreads through ad networks[1].
What's a good way to browse safely without using something like tails? There's firejail[2] and obviously I can run it as a different user
[1]: https://news.sophos.com/en-us/2015/07/21/a-closer-look-at-th...
1. when pages don't work at all, try looking for cloudflare links. They might have their JS and CSS hosted there
2. When you want to play videos or audio look for *cdn domains (aliexpress has alicdn for example). These ones I tend to add to my whitelist.
3. If you have something like google apis you can add it to the whitelist and add a sitespecific conditional in adblock or ublock.
I started blocking all JS by default for security, but I've actually found it to be a much better user experience as well. You deal with the annoyance of having to whitelist domains, and sure a lot of SPAs don't work at all until you enable JS for the client-side rendering, but many, many websites work far better because all the content I care about is server-side rendered and JS is used to load ads that disrupt the experience (this is especially true on mobile. For that I highly recommend the Brave browser). You'd be surprised how much better it can make parts of the web tho to have no JS :-)
The uMatrix UI makes managing this a lot easier.
There are lots of services I would be glad to outright pay for, or have some sort of flattr-type service attached to. I don't feel one iota guilty for blocking ads, given the risks and costs.
I don't run JS at all except for very few webpages (think gmail log in page, etc).
EDIT: Now that I think about it, I haven't really stressed how good uMatrix is. It really has changed the way I use the internet.
I agree so much. I cannot recommend umatrix highly enough. It has put me completely back in control of what sites can and can't do. I block everything by default except for first-party CSS and images (e.g. *.ycombinator.com when I visit news.ycombinator). It's great, and not at all as bothersome as I thought.
No more HTML5 pop-ups, deceptive ads, no more auto loading videos, no more sneaky audio, no more weird javascript that slows my browser to a crawl, no more tracking.
Honestly people, give it a shot. It's amazing.
I find myself more and more liking to use my laptop for browsing, which makes me think I could block images by default on my desktop as well and rarely ever notice it anymore.
Most sites actually work better with this. They're faster, there's less clutter, no ads, less risk. Some need a little convincing by unblocking some CSS or images. Umatrix makes this super easy. If a site requires javascript to run, I just skip that content. It's different for web apps like trello or github of course. Those get much more permissions.
> How on earth do you navigate what to let through and what to block?
umatrix gives a nice matrix (duh) that shows exactly what's trying to load. I dont often need to unblock things, but when I do, it's usually obvious right away. Takes maybe two clicks. Worth the effort IMHO
On my macbook, I run Safari with no loading of JS or images at all, and firefox with uMatrix again. And again, if a page isn't readable without JS, then I don't read it, or I wait until I can use chromium on my desktop, assuming that I'm not going to allow the scripts in uMatrix, which I usually don't.
On my phone, I run Safari with JS always disabled, which is actually perhaps surprisingly fine for the vast majority of mobile websites.
And I run firefox for iOS with JS enabled if I really really need to look at something that doesn't work on non-JS Safari.
You get used to it. Most JS on the web is junk anyway. I don't have any FOMO by avoiding JS almost entirely, but maybe that's just me (and people like me)?
A notch better would be running Qubes OS.