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Comment by sdfjkl | Hacker News Reader

So what's a good alternative (Firefox)? I'm using GlimmerBlocker, but due to being a proxy, it can't filter HTTPS pages.

Adblock Edge looks like a decrapified fork of Adblock Plus.

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I just founds this, it's a fork of Adblock Plus:

https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/?sr...

I use the venerable (but still actively maintained) Privoxy, which is a proxy but still does most of what I want on HTTPS pages. It can't examine the page contents themselves, but it can block 3rd-party requests by hostname, which gets most of the web-bugs and such.

I had some problems with loading times/pipelining in Opera (12.x) and Privoxy and hence changed to AdBlock (which appears to be the same as AdBlock Chrome referred to above). Browsing became much smoother afterwards.

Firefox addons for privacy and security with usable settings:

- AdBlock Edge. Filter subscriptions: EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Disable Malware, Fanboy's Annoyance List, Prebake

- NoScript. Use "allow scripts globally" or otherwise most websites won't work. It will still protect against know attacks.

- Cookie Monster. Then set global/default preference to saving cookies for session only.

- FireGloves. Uncheck "disable plugin and mimeType lists" in Cloak Settings.

- HTTPS Everywhere

- LastPass

Is there some mistake in your NoScript item? Installing the plug-in and then using "allow scripts globally" is the equivalent of never installing the plug-in. It provides almost no value at all when run that way.

No. It stills protects against known attacks, like XSS attacks. If you block scripts by default you'll have to configure what scripts to allow every time you visit a new site, or every time the site adds new assets.

requestpolicy <- simply blocks all traffic to external webserver

RequestPolicy suffers of the same problem as NoScript with default settings: it blocks everything and you have to waste time configuring what JS files are allowed in each site you visit. Your browsing becomes 10,000% more inefficient.

The easiest to audit is to change /etc/hosts to send malware sites to 127.0.0.1. I use Dan Pollock's hosts file, which is well-commented:

http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

I keep a Git repository with the contents that I update from time to time - this makes it easier to do diffs against past versions: https://github.com/chalst/pollockhostsfork

If you want a smaller HOSTS file (useful with Windows) that only targets advertisement and tracking servers, I've found HP Hosts' ad_servers.asp list to be good.

http://hosts-file.net/ad_servers.asp

I use noscript as well as adblock plus.

Ghostery. Can't recommend it highly enough; also works on Chrome, Safari, Opera and IE.

Ghostery users should be aware of: http://www.businessinsider.com/evidon-sells-ghostery-data-to... (no judgement on the practice implied, just flagging it as something for potential users to consider).

Ghostery alternative: https://disconnect.me

Disconnect has generally been working better for me than Ghostery did too; although some parts of the Disconnect UI I still find more confusing and harder to use than analagous parts of ghostery.

And open source apparently! https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect

But isn't that only if you enable Ghost Rank, which is disabled by default?

That's correct.

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