Hacker News Reader

Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

> In my opinion NoScript is the single most powerful security tool for the home user

Unfortunately, it is also a great tool for breaking websites ...

True, but that's what the whitelist is for. Browsers are so complex these days that visiting a website you've never heard of before may as well be you running a random executable. Will your browsers security hold up if the website is hostile? Probably, in the same way the security features of your OS and/or anti-malware software will probably keep you safe from a random malicious executable.

I have ran malware on known sites due to faulty ads and some Java 0-day about 5 years ago. I never enabled Java in my browser again. I do wonder if having used NoScript would of saved me since it does block Java applets too.

The problem is that if you suffer from information-addiction, like most people nowadays do, the whitelist quickly becomes filled with every website out there.

I've actually had the opposite problem, I have yet to make a habit of saving my noscript (now umatrix) settings, so any time-saving of eliminating slow scripts is wasted refreshing it three times trying to figure out which cdn is the important one; and trying to selectively enable the scripts of a video streaming site is even worse. Still worth having it though, especially when you go to traditionally sketchy download sites and see it have a cleaner UI than the apple homepage with just a single download button.

See, this is where data collection would actually come in useful.

Noscript can collect the information as to the most common settings for each website (say youtube) and apply them automatically.

Would save the whole "temp allow" -> "refresh" whack a mole game :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com