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Comment by beala | Hacker News Reader

Scrolling through the comments reading about all the adblockers that folks recommend makes my head spin. Why exactly should I trust any of these to have full access to my browser? Looking through the app store I see so many that are clearly trying to impersonate the well known ones by using similar names. It sounds like uBlock Origin Lite is trusted by many, but watch out for Ublock and 1Block, which are also top App Store results. Going off memory, the the chrome store is even worse. The whole situation is extremely sketchy. This is not even to mention supply chain attacks which could hijack even honest projects.

Personally I’ve settled on blocking at the DNS level with unbound and a blocklist. It’s not perfect but it limits the blast radius.

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>Why exactly should I trust any of these to have full access to my browser?

Content blockers on iOS don't have "full access". Most adblocking apps provide both a content blocker and an extension, the latter of which is used to work around stuff that content blockers can't block, or bugs that result as of blocking scripts from loading, but they're not needed. You can get 95% of the functionality by just using content blockers.

I guess my head is still spinning.

I took a second look at ad blockers on the app store, and many report that they collect various bits of data. Are you saying that there's a special content blocker component to all of these that can't collect data because they're isolated by iOS? I'm not sure how anyone who isn't a iOS developer is supposed to navigate this. To uBlock's credit, their App Store page reports that they collect no data, but is this enforced by iOS? Or just a checkbox that the developer clicked?

>I took a second look at ad blockers on the app store, and many report that they collect various bits of data.

Because the "app privacy" disclosures that apple only contains broad categories about what data the app can possibly collect. If the app collects analytics in the UI itself (ie. the part where you select filters or whatever), it has to say the app collects analytics. It's not possible to say "we only collect analytics on your usage of the app, not what your browsing history is".

>Are you saying that there's a special content blocker component to all of these that can't collect data because they're isolated by iOS?

Yes.

> but watch out for Ublock and 1Block, which are also top App Store results.

Honestly this is more of an App Store issue than an Adblock one. For all of Apple's purported talents in curation, they really cannot seem to filter out the odd trojan horses: https://blog.lastpass.com/posts/warning-fraudulent-app-imper...

There are dubious results for "uBlock" as well on browser extension stores. If it's not breaking rules (copyright violation, malware) it's precarious for companies to take action. It's obvious to me that uBlock Origin is the "correct" result, but how would a company determine that at scale?

The app was removed a day after your article was posted. The app name, developer, icon, and images are all different. It's absolutely a problem, but it was addressed.

If Apple aggressively took action against this with a high error rate, the headlines would probably be about anti-competition, censorship, and upset developers.

> but how would a company determine that at scale?

Two-way signature validation. Apple distributes unique developer IDs; make the dev sign the app locally before uploading it, like Google does for the Play Store. If those trojan horses still make it through Apple's manual inspection process, then they need to fire everyone working for the App Store and replace them with AI.

> If Apple aggressively took action against this with a high error rate

They need to take action. Apple's entire argument for an App Store monopoly is that they curate apps individually before they're uploaded to ensure a baseline of quality. When they stop vetting apps and allow the App Store to become like every other store, their argument in favor of monopoly control evaporates.

So yes, it would be anti-competitive censorship, but that's nothing Apple hasn't done before. The real issue is that their "premium" store interface is getting shown-up by the Google Play services. At the going rate there won't be anti-competitive behavior to complain about since Apple will be forced to accept competing storefronts - and they have no one to blame but themselves.

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