Privacy Badger Is Changing to Protect You Better | Hacker News Reader

Privacy Badger Is Changing to Protect You Better

eff.org

157 pointsplopilop97 comments

This is quite unfortunate news but not surprising. This effectively turns Privacy Badger for the majority of users into another block list.

Fingerprinting vs ad tracking protection has been an ongoing war. The natural escalation to tracking protection is to fingerprint even harder. I'd expect most power users who like to configure their extensions and blocking lists to be suprised how much information thst provides to differentiate them. Even without that browsers by default share a lot of information with every website (https://panopticlick.eff.org/).

I don't see a good ending to this war. Solutions like Firefox containers requires you to be extremely thoughtful in your site usage and don't protect from more advanced fingerprinting techniques (that for example cloudflare employs). The web is fundimentally a little broken here.

Given the pervasive commercial surveillance system, a user needs to have several protective layers just to browse the WWW:

a browser with security extensions (although a good browser should be built with security as a design principle, not as an "add-on")

ESNI and DoH (even though Cloudflare can see the aggregate)

DNS caching and blocking in the subnet

iptables/nftables blocking of undesirable IP address ranges by the router

edit: It's safer to leave the dysfunctional WWW alone and use only RSS.

Disagree on DoH though, because it defeats DNS caching and blocking in the subnet. Plus, many people trust their own provider more than yet another US corporation.

It defeats DNS caching and blocking in the "subnet" because for most US users the DNS provider is an adversary, and trusting it would be a mistake.

But there is an entire world outside the US. I trust my local ISP way more than a US corporation.

That's fascinating, but now you know why people in the US are quick to embrace DoH in its default configurations. And, of course, nothing ties DoH to major US corporations. You can DoH to a NUC in your cousin's bedroom closet.

I run DoH on a raspberry Pi with piHole. And then DoH from it to Quad9's servers. DNS blocking, with DoH.

You can also just run Pi-Hole directly on something like Fly.io, and DoH to it from your local machine. :P

Interesting - I assume their free tier is enough to run this.

However, local caching on the Pi might yield faster lookup time.

They're all only useful in certain circumstances.

> It's safer to leave the dysfunctional WWW alone and use only RSS.

Is their any evidence that Google killed Google Reader because it interfered with their Ad/user-tracking metrics business?

Why is this unfortunate? It's a change to a default setting. You can still turn it back on, I think.

Ideally you're using a multi-layered approach, meaning that much of the ugly stuff should be filtered out upstream of your browser extensions anyway.

The "community learning" feature they mention investigating at the bottom of the article sounds like the best of both worlds: automatic learning without fingerprinting and a pre-trained block list.

This would even be effective, in my opinion, if they just merged your fingerprint with other, random users.

This is quite unfortunate news but not surprising. This effectively turns Privacy Badger for the majority of users into another block list.

Yes. Privacy Badger was not just an anti-tracker. It's also something of an ad blocker. Since ad sites tend to track, it learns to block them.

Checking "cnn.com" right now, Privacy Badger is blocking 36 sites. These include "static.ads-twitter.com", "c.amazon-adsystem.com", "www.googletagmanager.com", "ad.doubleclick.net", and "amplify.outbrain.com". Blocking those knocks out most of the ads from the big players. Two of those are Google's, and they probably don't like being blocked by a large number of users.

Taking that away to prevent a theoretical approach to tracking seems like a sell-out by EFF.

Firefox Containers ought to just let do such things:

1. Open every new website (the one which doesn't have a saved container for it) in a new random/untagged container - destroy that container and data/everything when I close the last tab of that site

2. Unless I tag/name that container for that website and then persist it the way you do - and give me one click operation to tag name and (maybe select an icon/colour for that container)

3. What about giving website favicon as an option to the container icon

4. Get rid of those "Oh you are opening this website B (container_B) from a website A (container_A) - do you want us to open it in container_B instead"? "Always"? Yes! Yes! Make it default or give me an easy options to make it default damn it - give me an option the first time where I can mark "always do this"!

5. Do we really need special container for Firefox and then for the rest? Why not ship with a default already set container in the Multi Container add-on that's Fb container?

There's an option "Select a container for each new tab" but it's not very helpful as it lets you just choose either one among all the existing containers, or "No container" and that is blocking pop-up.

Is this fingerprinting javascript-based, and therefore can be circumvented by whitelisting scripts, or are there server-side methods as well?

I'm not a security expert so I may be wrong (if so, someone please educate me). My impression is that if you own several websites and trackers, you can identify users by the specific combination of blocked and non-blocked trackers, plus data about their machine/OS, ISP, screen resolution, and browser languages, as well as checking to see if browser permissions are turned on for notifications, location, and the like. I'm not sure you can prevent that with a javascript-based approach alone.

What is the recommended cocktail of extensions to use these days for optimal privacy? I have so much to think about that I haven't had a chance to dig in and learn what's best.

I try to keep the number of browser extensions to a minimum since they have access to every piece of sensitive information in the browser.

So my setup is:

- uBlock Origin [0]

- Cookie AutoDelete [1]

- Firefox's "Enhanced Tracking Protection" set to "Strict" [2]

- DuckDuckGo as the default search provider

[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/ublock-origin...

[1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/cookie-autode...

[2]: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enhanced-tracking-prote...

Additional useful pieces are Skip Redirects and Smart Referer. And enabling First Party protection in about:config, plus perhaps Facebook Container.

Against anti-adblock, Nano Defender is the thing. (There's an uBlock Origin mode in that.)

I like the idea of Skip Redirects and Smart Referer, but I feel they aren't worth the risk.

They're not popular extensions (11K and 6K users respectively) and aren't being reviewed by Mozilla. I'm certainly not going to review them myself, and I see no reason to trust their developers and their personal security practices.

I've found EasyList + "uBlock filters – Unbreak" to be sufficient in eliminating anti-adblock warnings.

Are these options in firefox or addons? Would you mind explaining what they do and why they're useful?

What is the best way to use DDG like Google with minimum friction and good search results (I rarely get relevant answers if I do a pure DDG search)?

Also, what is DDG? It has its own crawlers (DuckDuckBot) like Google and Bing have (assuming Bing has, haven't read on it)? Or DDG (or DuckDuckBot) just filters/parses results from Google et al?

It's also possible to configure Firefox to natively clear cookies on exit, minus an exception list if preferable.

- Firefox > Preferences > Privacy & Security > Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed

- Firefox > Preferences > Privacy & Security > Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed > Manage Exceptions

Definately worth considering yes. I rarely close Firefox so deleting cookies when I close a tab works better in my case.

What about setting privacy.firstparty.isolate? I've had it on for years and almost nothing breaks.

'almost'? Do you have examples of websites breaking? Does it mean for example that you wouldn't be able to log onto YouTube because Google cookies are blocked?

Microsoft Teams — https://teams.microsoft.com/

I use adblock plus (imo interchangeable with ublock origin), noScript, facebook container, and HTTPS everywhere.

No script is a pain to begin with, but you come to find out that google and facebook are everywhere constantly watching. It's incredibly unsettling.

adblock and ublock are absolutely not interchangeable.

Here is the source code for ublock: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock which is GNU GPL v3.0

Adblock is run by Wladimir Palant's Eyeo GmbH. It used to be an open source project but was rewritten to what it is now and is tied to "acceptable advertising" policies and is run by a for-profit company. As always, if you aren't paying for it, you should be asking who is.

Who's paying for uBlock?

uBlock Origin is Free. Open source. For users by users. No donations sought.
Without the preset lists of filters, this extension is nothing. So if ever you really do want to contribute something, think about the people working hard to maintain the filter lists you are using, which were made available to use by all for free.

You can contribute by helping translate uBlock Origin on Crowdin: https://crowdin.net/project/ublock

from https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#about

You can't separate the "if you're not paying" line from the "for-profit company" and apply it to the free/open source project.

Well someone is still paying for opensource.. the maintainers and developers. The contributors. They're mostly paying with time, but there's some direct cost too.

It's why we want to be good users of open source and contribute back, whether that's donating or helping write documentation, manage issues, etc.

The cost of open source is the direct cost - what it takes to build an adblocker in this case. The cost of a for-profit product is the direct cost and the profit margin - a higher number in every situation. Instead of the for profit company paying that, it's some external party and if that isn't you it's.. well, still somebody. As the saying goes, if you aren't the customer, you're the product.

Adblock Plus itself has trackers in it. They also accept money to whitelist every major ad company and trackers meaning you gain nothing privacy wise and just waste CPU resources.

uBlock Origin is many times better (and faster)

I went through the pain period of noscript but still couldn't stick with it. I had to be constantly mindful every time I buy something online. The process would half-fail at some stage and then I have to start hunting for which domain is the one that's essential for the checkout to complete.

This is not NoScript's fault of course. Some websites are including 20-30 different domains (check out maperformance.com for example) and picking and choosing to get something to work is a nightmare.

I keep a separate browser profile just for purchases; once I've decided to buy something, I open that profile and copy the URL over. That way, my "browsing" profile remains locked down, and purchases stay easy.

One option is the disable NoScript in Private Windows and use private windows for online purchasing.

Another option is to use another web browser for online purchasing.

It's annoying, but then it lets me know "don't shop there anymore" if it's that bad.

jomashop for instance...

NoScript is inconvenient, but essential. All of the other extensions are airbags whereas NoScript is the seatbelt.

Best is relative.

Privacy badger and ublock origin seems to break almost nothing.

Adding umatrix blocks additional stuff but breaks sites. And worth running a pihole too. It seems to catch a lot even with adblockers enabled

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but ublock breaks almost nothing because it just allows trackers on pages where blocking it would break something.

So if blocking a doubleclick tracker will stop a video from playing on some page/site, an exception will get added to the block list to just allow it on that page/site.

It makes it 'just work', but imo it's not clear enough in the UI that this is happening and I would guess that most users don't even know.

Pihole is great for stopping stuff that’s not in the browser in particular. OS telemetry, in-app ads, phishing sites, etc. In pronciple I suppose it can block cryptoviruses, but it’s probably hard to keep a good blocklist up to date.

Umatrix is deprecated now. I currently use NoScript and it sort of fills the same role.

I used noscript before umatrix. Umatrix is def technically superior in my eyes. Also noscript has some pretty shady sht in its history. Exactly what I don’t need from a privacy extension

> Umatrix is def technically superior in my eyes.

Don't disagree there.

> Also noscript has some pretty shady sht in its history.

I haven't heard anything about that. Could I get some more info? I use NoScript pretty much everywhere and would like to know if I need to stop.

Edit: Punctuation

e.g. Got caught manipulating other extensions to whitelist his own site

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoScript#Controversies

Thanks, I appreciate it.

Every custom extension and configuration you change makes your browser unique in its own way. See https://amiunique.org/

At the most extreme using Tor Browser and its defaults maximises privacy for any general loginless browsing.

If you're logging into services with accounts then a mix Firefox containers, uBlockOrigin, ClearUrls and Smart Referer provides pretty decent privacy.

Cookie autodelete is also worthwhile to prevent cookies from lingering unnecessarily.

The Resist fingerprinting and Third party isolation settings is also worth a try, it doesn't stop everything but it does prevent some of it. For usability I usually install the corresponding add-ons so I can toggle them with a button (these settings tends to break stuff).

LocalCDN may also help a bit by using local copies of commonly used resources.

I used to have an add-on that could spoof the font detection by making small random changes to font sizes, but it stopped working and I haven't found a replacement.

Font detection is stopped by fingerprinting resistance. But not font enumeration. (Which fonts you have, not how they look.)

Then there is CSS exfiltration and rectangle readout...

> See https://amiunique.org/

See also: https://panopticlick.eff.org

These tests are sketchy - I have been awarded 17.85 bits on this browser however 13.94 bits come from one line item:

> System Fonts Arial, Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, Bookman Old Style, Century Schoolbook, Courier, Courier New, Helvetica, Monaco, Palatino, Palatino Linotype, Times, Times New Roman (via javascript)

But as a Linux user, those are all mapped by Freetype (some to the same typeface) as many of those are copyright (? encumbered, not freely licensed) fonts:

    $ for zzz in Arial "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono" "Bookman Old Style" "Century Schoolbook" Courier "Courier New" Helvetica Monaco "Palatino Palatino" Linotype Times "Times New Roman"; do fc-match "$zzz"; done;
    
    LiberationSans-Regular.ttf: "Liberation Sans" "Regular"
    .. 12 more lines of font replacement maps...

This website javascript test is measuring a heuristic, giving it a very high score (almost twice as high as anything else, "Hash of canvas fingerprint" is next) but that measurement is patently false compared to the real data. (it also reports no Ad Blocker used and I have uBlock-O fully enabled).

You should probably contact the EFF, so that could improve it.

I am a lifelong EFF fan and supporter, but... well, if everyone (ad / tracker people) is using this code and set of techniques I'm better off not pointing out how wrong it is. :)

It's almost like how Airwolf used to toss out chaff left and right to escape the bad guys, I have Earnest Borgnine in the back going "Why can't we hover like regular helicopter people?" as Firefox tosses out fake font results to Javascript sniffers.

Both are garbage and both underestimate and overestimate entropy at the same time, due to sampling from a biased set of users.

I would like Privacy Badger to keep aggregating information from users who volunteer to do so.

I use the following extensions for browsing "security" (ha!):

Disable WebRTC

Canvas Blocker

Firefox Multi-Account Containers

LocalCDN

Privacy Badger

uBlock Origin

But disabling WebRTC and Canvas makes you easier to be fingerprinted? Most people doesn't block that, so those feature not being available on a modern browser makes you "special" right?

The browser is a complete traitor in this commercial surveillance system.

It doesn't seem possible with any of the mainstream browsers to avoid a "unique" fingerprint. RSS is a good counter-tactic.

In the end, if I have to apply defensive tactics just to read information, I will stop visiting. When I enter a store, I am unique. But I don't let the store cover me with tracers.

I'm not sure which add-on OP uses, but many canvas privacy add-ons simply add noise to the canvas calls.

Disabling WebRTC isn't as much as an identifier, I imagine.

Which is why you should use Resist Fingerprinting option instead, as it makes you look identical to other RFP users.

Maybe fingerprinting is not what they're trying to secure themselves from.

Privacy Badger and Catblock might not be the best combo but it is furry mammal themed. I haven't had the urge to upgrade from it. However, sometimes I feel guilty for partaking in content that I have ad blocked as the creators lose out.

Then I think about how it is that adverts might zonk out my brain, thereby rendering me unable to write helpful pleasant comments that are hopefully well received by the content creators. So being an advert blocking person isn't all that bad if you contribute with engaged comments.

PrivacyTools usually has an up to date list [1] of good extensions to use. It might also be worth going through their about:config tweaks section [2].

[1] https://privacytools.io/browsers/#addons

[2] https://privacytools.io/browsers/#about_config

Is HTTPS Everywhere actually useful at this point? The sites I visit use https by default.

Last time I saw plain old http was quite a while ago.

It makes sure that when you type www.somewebsite.com and press enter you go directly to https instead of going through a http-https redirection that could be intercepted. This is only useful for websites that support https but are not in the HSTS preload list. Alternatively you can enable that Firefox setting someone mentioned but once you do that you stop being able to visit websites that don't support https so HTTPS Everywhere is a good middle ground.

Firefox now has HTTPS requirement as an option in settings.

I have:

Privacy badger

Ublock

Cookie autodelete

HTTPS everywhere

Decentraleyes

DuckDuckGo (extension) (it auto sets DDG as the browser search engine, but you can disable that)

Multi account containers - 1 for every frequently visited site. There’s an extension called temporary containers that’s interesting too

I don’t but should use noscript

Canvas blocker would freeze my browser so I don’t use it.

NextDNS is installed on every device and the router.

For mobile (ios) I use safari with Firefox focus set as the content blocker.

I hope it's uBlock "Origin" and not just "uBlock".

"uBlock Origin" is the original and real deal. The other one is a scam.

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock (mentioned multiple times in these threads)

Discussion about the two: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14335190

It is indeed ublock origin. Should have specified

Decentraleyes is not actively developed, use LocalCDN which is a maintained fork of it.

Really? They just bumped the version 6 months ago, and the repo shows changes in the last couple of weeks:

https://git.synz.io/Synzvato/decentraleyes

Is there an official announcement somewhere? The website doesn't indicate anything.

I don’t think that is true. See the other sibling comment. Also LocalCDN, whilst it has some nice extras, isn’t a recommended extension - decentraleyes is.

I'm reliving my teenage rebellion with the following set of extensions (on Firefox):

- uBlock Origin, most lists enabled, 3rd party iframes blocked

- Privacy Settings

- Multi-Account Containers, Temporary Containers

- Decentraleyes

It's crazy what we need to do these days just to surf the web!

I do this:

VPN on at all times

Firefox as the main browser

Firefox enhanced tracking protection set to Strict

Firefox containers enabled to isolate specific sites when I do want to log into them (Google...)

Everything set to be deleted (cookies, cache etc) when I close Firefox

Allowed cookies for a handful of sites I want to keep being logged into

DuckDuckGo as the main search

uBlock Origin on with default blocklists. I really love the "element picker" feature which allows me to remove annoying elements

uBlock Origin should always be your first line of defense. Always.

I don't know whether this is the best set of extensions, but I'm personally using a mix of

- uBlock Origin

- Facebook Container

- Decentraleyes, ClearURLs

- HTTPS Everywhere

- Privacy Badger.

- Redirect AMP to HTML

- Terms of Service; Didn’t Read

- Smart Referer

- User-Agent Switcher

Next to that I'm using Bitwarden and Floccus (Nextcloud Bookmarks) for self-hosted decentralised password and bookmarks sync.

They get a lot of flack here but kudos to Google for informing Privacy Badger about this.

Google's original report on Safari's ITP was part of a major FUD campaign about privacy measures. Google went so far as to suggest because fingerprinting was possible, we should just allow third party cookies. Arguably, carrying this forward in limiting the effectiveness of Privacy Badger to block tracking domains is a further extension of that behavior.

Google has finally been pushed to accept that third party cookies are going away, but are now advocating for a "privacy budget" system that essentially gives them a certain amount of allowance to violate your privacy. They are still FUD-ing about the drastically more correct solution: To just protect your privacy outright.

>because fingerprinting was possible, we should just allow third party cookies

Nothing is either/or. Increasing the cost and difficulty of tracking does increase privacy. At the same time, there is some truth to the argument that Google is not losing the arms race between its trackers and the blockers anytime soon. Fundamentally, as long as web pages have this much control over your computer, they will be able to track you. The web is broken and needs to be paired down and reworked so that privacy is part of the protocol.

Question: if I use uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger at the same time, who blocks what?

In Firefox, you can see that in the developer tool's Network panel.

Can DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials be an alternative to Privacy Badger? Once I replaced Privace Badger by it, because Privacy Badger had conflicts with some sites I read often. But I'm not sure if its's an optimal alternative.

DDG privacy essentials is domain based blocking.

I recommend uBlock Origin. Remove everything else.

Why not both Privacy Badger and uBlock origin?

I don't know what Privacy Badger's blocklist looks like, but without the learning aspect, if it's inbuilt blocklist is already covered by uBlock then all you're doing is slowing down your browser without any benefit.

> but without the learning aspect

They're saying not only can it still be turned back on, but that the inbuilt list is going to be built on their side using the same learning aspect, not built manually.

Right, fair enough. I think having as many as possible makes sense and they're worth the loss of convenience.

As many adblockers as possible is a very bad idea. They interfere with each other. Half of the issues on r/ublockorigin are cause by people using adblock plus with it.

Use only uBlock Origin.

I've never encountered an issue, with Privacy Badger and uBlock.

Does anyone have a good example of a site plastered with ads that still renders with privacy badger? I want a go-to screenshot to link to for my rants any time a website tells me to disable my "ad blocker"

There are several digital newspapers that you can view with and without ad blocking.

Here are some Austrian examples https://kurier.at/ https://www.diepresse.com/

I think you are misunderstanding my question. I want a site that is plastered in ads with PB enabled.

kurier.at shows an advertisement for lust-auf-osterreich.at after disabling all cookies.

Didn't I just read somewhere on slashdot or hacker news that privacy badger logs all of your websites you visit and websites that you enable/disable certain cookies or javascript?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com