Hacker News Reader

Comment by andai | Hacker News Reader

Some pages don't let you "Reject All" cookies, you have to uncheck them one by one, and there's literally hundreds of ad networks listed.

It's spooky, I tell ya!

View on HN

Use your browser settings to block third-party cookies altogether. And, better yet, install uBlock Origin and never see an ad again.

Doesn’t Google grant itself first-party status by redirecting you through an advertisement domain? µBlock definitely is the king of ad blocking extensions — only the fork AdNauseam (https://adnauseam.io/) can compete, and that’s by both blocking ads and fighting back with obfuscating click simulation.

Hmm. I think it would be better if the extension clicked randomly rather than clicked on all ads. That would cause the numbers to be much harder to interpret, and ad agencies or departments would have a much harder time measuring their efficacy or justifying their existence.

Me too, and it provides a slider for the percentage to click that I kept below 100 when I used it (now I use Palemoon, which doesn’t support WebExtensions, and I use /etc/hosts).

You can change the click frequency in the settings. I guess it would be better to make that setting a part of the splash page that shows up on installation, though, as otherwise many will miss it.

> ad agencies or departments would have a much harder time measuring their efficacy or justifying their existence.

50% of adverts are a waste of money, the problem for people wanting to advertise is nobody knows which 50%

> never see an ad again

I wish that were true. Although uBlock Origin does a good job, some ads definitely still make it through. There are also some sites that detect ad blockers and refuse to let you in unless you disable it. There are workarounds for some of these, but it's still a bit of a mess.

I agree, although to add, uBlock Origin has an 'annoyances' list that does a pretty good job of stopping detectors.

Thanks for the reminder that I hadn't enabled this in my current browser :)

If a website doesn't let me in because I use an ad blocker, I respect their decision and I leave the site and find what I need elsewhere.

I have yet to come across a site that offered something so unique or compelling that I decided to turn off my ad blocker to use it.

> There are also some sites that detect ad blockers and refuse to let you in unless you disable it.

That, and when there's an email subscription popup, is when the one-click JS toggle extension comes out. Can't detect anything if it can't run any code in your browser.

It can "detect" if JS is disabled (by loading content via JS) so this doesn't always work.

Please don't. Unless you are willing to pay for the services you are using for free now, ads is what keeps them "free".

You can object to being targeted based on your browsing habits, but don't stop ads altogether.

Ad networks had their chance, it's done now.

Eh, I get where you're coming from, but no. The ad industry is insidious and has exploited every means possible to hijack the user's attention: pop-ups, flashing banners, auto-playing videos with sound, inline ads that reflow what you're reading after they take way too long to load, extensions that insert ads, paying ISPs to insert ads, talking to Alexa through your TV...

There is no level these people will not stoop to, and we're sick of their shit. They brought this on themselves.

It's my device and it's my choice what it's allowed to load and display to me. It's not my responsibility to make sure someone who provides their service for free earns money from shitting into my brain. Implied contracts aren't a thing for me. If you want to make sure you get paid for your service, put up a paywall.

Too late. They had their chance and blew it.

this. this is the way i solve this. They can use all the cookies they want, ublock tends to just eliminate all of it.

Overall FF has been incredibly user friendly making all sort of plugins that focus on privacy possible, while Chrome has been as hostile to it as possible.

Unless you get the pop-up from the site that says, "We see you're using an ad blocker. You need to turn it off in order to access our site."

Along with some marketing drivel about how its important advertisers get their ad revenue.

This is when you revoke that website's privilege to run arbitrary Turing-complete code in your browser because it didn't use it wisely.

I seem to always have this handy snippet in my dev tools history:

document.querySelectorAll('input[type=checkbox]').forEach(el => el.removeAttribute('checked'))

https://github.com/oblador/hush if you use safari :) Basically the regulations say that if a user doesn't respond to this popup, by default all the cookies are rejected except the ones the site needs.

This app hides the popup :)

Sites can set as many cookies as they want. I have installed temporary containers (that is a Firefox only feature sadly), 15 minutes after I close the last tab in that group all those cookies are automatically deleted.

Each tab group then has its own cookie container, so I can have multiple groups open and they don't share anything - I can login to different google (or any other service) accounts in different contains and it works like I want it to.

For the sites that I want to use logged in, I either create a special container for that site only, or I just use a password manager to log me in each time I need to visit it.

The added privacy is great, the peace of mind in just clicking I agree is great.

How do you circumvent browser fingerprinting? If every container has the same user agent, canvas, screen resolution, JS benchmark test results, etc. then no matter what but you are uniquely identified, bingo!

I really feel today having different devices with different browsers, connected to different providers is only working solution.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com