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Comment by chris_wot | Hacker News Reader

If adblockers have a huge amount of access, then consider how much access ads themselves have.

uBlock Origin is open source.

They have less access? When I visit my national healthcare website extensions can look at my traffic, but there are no ads.

I'm not saying ad blockers are bad, but it's not like we didn't have extensions being subverted in the past.

You're taking about access you're afraid an extension might be exploited to expose versus ad networks and social media plugins that are known to expose.

I'll take the potential bogeyman over the real one, thanks.

Since you missed it: theyre talking about extensions having access to portals where no ads exist

I am pretty sure most extensions (or at least ublock) can be set to stay off on specific websites? The extension can have an extra list of known safe sites that don't have ads where the extension stays off by default (should still be turn on-able because the list might be outdated).

In uBlock's case, when you first install it on Firefox you are peomoted to give it permission to "Access data for all websites that you visit". Even if you disable adblocking on a specific website Unlock still has access to it and can see it.

I didn't miss it. That exposure is only a problem if the ad blocker extension misbehaves. It's a theoretical problem.

If you go to your government’s office and they give you a list of names of known advertisers, then walk along your merry way and use the list to not engage those advertisers, the only trust you need is the source of the information on that list, not the list or your observance to it.

Your observance of it is open source in the case of ublock. The list should still be scrutinized, it’s a local system with an unverified source. That’s all.

You can disable your adblocker on any site you wish. If you're paranoid, you have control

You can disable your ad blocker on sites that have no ads.

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