µBlock, a lean and fast blocker

Thank you all!

 

A basic mitigation of potential abuse of IDN will be added to uBlockO soon:

There is a test-site for it:

After visiting of the test-site, ea.com can be seen two times (ea.com and a look-alike domain) in the uBlockO-matrix and the user can't distinguish between these two.
But with the mitigation mentioned above, the user should be able to do so.

 

It looks like uBO for Edge is no longer beta.

 

uBlockO 1.12.3.0beta has been released and the result can be seen above.
After hovering over (idn) ea.com the punycode-domain can be seen (xn--80aj.com)

 

BTW, in some other post I mentioned that I couldn't post any pics on Facebook anymore, and turns out it was because of uBlock. This must have been a user error, I assume? Because it turns out I had to whitelist facebook.com, the weird thing is I had this problem on all browsers (Firefox, Chrome and Vivaldi), and I don't think I changed any settings.

 

Something you will have to keep in mind when using a content blocker:

Blockers work based on filter lists. Filter lists contains list of filters. Web sites can change, and these change can result in existing filters breaking functionality, or causing existing filters to not do their intended job. Furthermore, existing filters can cause false positives -- i.e. breaking web pages, something which need to be fixed by filter lists maintainers -- of course if this is properly reported to them.

Also, it is your responsibility to read the release notes of whatever extension you installed, it's your duty because it's your own interests which are at stake, and nobody else can do it for you.

Your Facebook issues was caused by a false positive in EasyPrivacy (any blocker using it was suffering the issue), which was quickly resolved by the maintainers of EasyPrivacy. Simply forcing an update of EasyPrivacy would have solved your issue without the need to speculate.

When forcing an update of filter lists does not solve whatever issue you experience on a web site, report to maintainers of filter lists (not on the issue tracker of content blocker extensions themselves). This is something I explained in release notes of uBO 1.12.1.

 

Thanks for letting me know. The thing is, auto-updating of filters is disabled on my system, so I have no clue how this problem started out of the blue. Normally I would think it was my own configuration error, but it happened on all browsers, and I don't really use Chrome and Vivaldi that much. I noticed that upload.facebook.com was blocked, so that was the problem.

 

BTW, can uBlock be the reason why I can't play the Twitter videos on this site? I get a "video can not be played" error.

http://www.ad.nl/andere-sporten/tennisster-konta-huilend-van-de-baan-na-scheldpartij-nastase~adad15162/

 

Especially the page above includes only a twitter-screenshot
Go to a page which includes a video, videos are embedded via iframe.
I can see "frame https://video.ad.nl/iframe.html? ... " or "frame https://www.youtube.com/..." in the logger and i can watch videos without problems.

If videos are embedded from 3rd-party sites don't forget to allow them in the matrix (for example youtube)

 

uBO in Edge doesn't block first party tracking cookies?

 

This is what I wrote in the comment you are answering to:

 

1.uB0 cannot control cookies, IMHO, but uMatrix can.
2. What do mean with "first party cookies"? Aren't tracking cookies usually 3rd-party cookies that track you you over many domains? FWIW, I've forbidden 3rd-party cookies in Firefox by default and haven't seen any negative side-effects.

EDIT: Those 3rd-party cookies should also be prevented by using EasyPrivacy and, of course, Dynamic Filtering in uB0.

 

I block third party cookies but I still get tracking cookies in Edge.

 

As said above (I forgot the "tracking" in my second sentence) I don't know what "first party tracking cookies" are. In my understanding all tracking cookies are 3rd party usually from ad networks that track you wherever you surf. First party cookies cannot be (mis)used to track you on other domains. I don't use Edge as I'm on Linux but it should have an option to control for which domains first party cookies are allowed. Or alternatively, an option to clear all cookies when the browser closes.

 

As I explained, I have Edge set to block third party cookies but still get tracking cookies.

I regularly get different cookies from adnxs.com and advertising.com in Edge. Easily removed with CCleaner and or SAS but I would like to block them installing in the first place.

 

Ah, okay. Now I understand (I was confused by your mentioning "first party tracking cookies"). I don't understand, though, how this can happen if you block 3rd party cookies in Edge. A serious bug? Anyway, you can try to use uB0 with Dynamic Filtering, probably in the hard blocking mode. This ensures that all network requests to 3rd party resources are completely blocked. However, be aware that you need to create noop rules for specific 3rd party sites on many sites you visit regularly.

EDIT: This site might be helpful.

 

I can use NoScript in Firefox and ScriptSafe in Chrome but the advanced settings in uBO completely baffle me. I can't make any sense from it at all.

 

These are the regular cookies I find in Edge.

 

It's not really difficult. You should first read and understand the quick guide to Dynamic Filtering and the site which explains which rules take precedence, then the wiki sites which explain default deny and the various blocking modes, and ultimately this site to understand how the various filter modes work together.

IMO, the 2 most important things to remember are:

1. Dynamic Filtering takes precedence over Static Filtering, and local dynamic filtering rules take precedence over global dynamic filtering rules.
2. If you use default deny or one of the advanced blocking modes and you have to allow a 3rd party site in order to make a site load properly, you should in most cases not create an allow rule for that 3rd party site but rather a noop rule as this ensures that static filters (from EasyList, EasyPrivacy etc.) are still applied.

 

That's my problem. I don't understand uBO at all and reading the Quick Guide only confuses me more. It may as well be Greek and the more I read the less I understand. "Noop" - what the hell's a Noop?

Maybe I'm just too slow.

 

Noop = the likes of Easylist, EasyPrivacy, and other checked list are followed.

So, if something is blocked by dynamic filtering, and afterwards you clicked noop for that blocked object, the blocked object may or may not be blocked depending if it has rules to be blocked in the list of 3rd party filters.

 

I think noop is a shortcut for no-operate. The thing is that - as gorhill put it somewhere - Dynamic Filtering is not only a matter of allowing or blocking something but it's rather a ternary decision:

• block rule: the cell is red - all network requests to that specific site are blocked and all static filters from the filter lists (EasyList etc.) are completely disregarded. Great for completely blocking ad networks/trackers in the global column.
• allow rule: the cell is green - again all static filters are disregarded and all network requests are completely allowed. Useful for unbreaking a site if something doesn't work as expected.
• noop rule: the cell is grey - Dynamic Filtering is disabled but the static filters from the filter lists are still applied. This should be preferred over an allow rule unless necessary.

I hope this clarifies some things.

 

Thanks @summerheat regarding your tip 2. Was not aware of that.

 

If you block 3rd-party cookies/data, these should not be there. Maybe they are the result of another extension, or whatever else Edge does behind the scene? Might be useful to try to find what is related to "8WEKYB3D8BBWE" in Edge.

 

Dynamic filtering is not really more complicated than NoScript. Just like it, it's about blocking/not blocking on a per-domain basis. uBO just add the concept of local/global rule -- whereas in NoScript rules are global. Additionally, uBO allows you to block/not block by the type of requests, for example "block all 3rd-party frames", or "inline script".

NoScript shows you a list of all domains for a given page, uBO shows you a list of all domains for a given page. NoScript allows you to block/not block a specific domain, uBO allows you to block/not block a specific domain.

If there was no ability to set local rules in uBO, the right-most column would just not exist, so there would be only one column to set rules. Now for each domain entry, you can set a block rule (red), an allow rule (green), and a noop rule (gray).

By default all rules in the dynamic filtering pane are gray, meaning there is no dynamic filtering at all. A noop rule is simply a way to override another block/allow rule to bring back the default behavior of no dynamic filtering for a given domain entry.

Edit: corrected "left-most" to "right-most".