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Comment by mikece | Hacker News Reader

This is always the first addon/extension I add to a browse; installing uBlock is like "sudo apt update && sudo apt update -y" on a freshly installed system -- you're asking for trouble if you don't secure things as soon as possible.

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The worst thing is that Firefox removes all add-ons if it was not used for a while. One can disable this by setting disableResetPrompt to true, but it's annoying e.g. when you set up an ad blocker on your mom's laptop only to find it being removed a few months later.

First time I heard about this - I set up uBlock on my mom's Firefox years ago, and it's still there...

Don't get me wrong, but that implies she is not using Firefox as her daily driver.

Changing the icon to, shudder, the edge icon might help and call it "Internet" and maybe she will use it. Most people do not really know, or care, that their browser is.

I do this with very un - techsavvy people and install uBo and they have a fairly safe time online.

Indeed. I'm no stranger to creating new browser profiles for different things, and the first thing I do when setting up a new profile (in Firefox) is to install uBo. I have it turned off in one profile for sites that break when using it. For some reason, some e-commerce stores don't work with it, because of KYC BS and having them flagging you as suspicious because you're using an AD-blocker. That I can tolerate though (it's finance right?). But for the bulk of my browsing, uBo is essential.

I turn it off when I'm buying from a site because I've had cases where the blocking interferes with the checkout. In one case recently, when I forgot to disable it, the transaction half went through. I was charged but the order was stuck pending payment and it required me contacting their support team to manually override that.

Yeah the reason I have a dedicated profile for e-commerce (with uBo not installed) is that e-commerce sometimes use an array of different domains during the checkout process, and you have to whitelist each domain which is bothersome. Best just not using uBo entirely during the process.

I keep a Chrome install for when disabling uBlock for the main site doesn't work. Moving over to that also has the benefit of removing Firefox as a reason the checkout might not be working (I tend to assume that the only browser people test for is Chrome).

I have had a few cases where even that didn't work and instead I had to switch to my phone and disconnect from my wifi to ensure that the DNS block list I use isn't the problem.

I was setting up a workplace computer last week. It was shocking to see all the scams circulating in the adds. Especially the download scams on download pages. Next time I will change the order and install uBlock the first thing after the browser.

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