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Which Is Better, Adblock Or Adblock Plus?
An anonymous reader writes: Wladimir Palant is the creator of the Adblock Plus browser extension, but he often gets asked how it compares to a similar extension for Chrome called Adblock. In the past, he's told people the two extensions achieve largely the same end, but in slightly different ways. However, recent changes to the Adblock project have him worried. "AdBlock covertly moved from an open development model towards hiding changes from its users. Users were neither informed about that decision nor the reasons behind it." He goes through the changelog and highlights some updates that call into question the integrity of Adblock. For example, from an update on June 6th: "Calling home functionality has been extended. It now sends user's locale in addition to the unique user ID, AdBlock version, operating system and whether Google Search ads are being allowed. Also, AdBlock will tell getadblock.com (or any other website if asked nicely) whether AdBlock has just been installed or has been used for a while — again, in addition to the unique user ID." Of course, Palant has skin in this game, and Adblock Plus has dealt with fallout from their "acceptable ads policy," but at least it's still developed in the open.
I'm behind Ad Limiter, which limits Google search ads to one per page, picking the best one based on SiteTruth ratings. You can set it for zero search ads if you like. It also puts SiteTruth ratings on Google search results. It's a demo for SiteTruth search spam filtering.
This Mozilla/Chrome add on has a general ad-blocking mechanism inside. Unlike most ad blockers, it's not based on regular expressions looking for specific HTML. It finds URLs known to lead to ads, works outward through the DOM to find the ad boundary, then deletes the ad. So it's relatively insensitive to changes in ad code, and doesn't require much maintenance. The same code processes search results from Google, Bing, Yahoo, Bleeko, DuckDuckGo, and Infoseek. (Coming soon, Yandex support, and better handling of Google ads within ads, where an ad has multiple links.)
So, if I wanted to do a better ad blocker, I could do so easily. Should I? Is another one really needed? Are the headaches of running one worth it?
But I do value those things, and in fact they are probably my #1 consideration when choosing a browser so I use Firefox despite its many faults.
So are you 100% google free? No Android, no Google browser, no Gmail?
The reason I ask is because when I type something into the Firefox search bar in it's default configuration, shortly after it will appear as a suggested search in Chrome's universal address bar.
It's not Chrome leaking user data.
But there is a strong misconception that android is still FOSS. The phrase that comes to mind is the rug has been pulled from under them. I was surprised to learn to what lengths google has gone to lock down android. It was certainly a huge reason as to why a lot of the tech sector was pushing android in the early days (nothing gets the tech sector weaker in the knees than FOSS). While you are right, that users don't care, google has performed a massive bait and switch.
> However, compared to a browser extension, the hosts files hack can't do wildcard pattern matching,
It also can't easily block the newest trick - DNS aliasing.
For example:
doubleclick.com -- easy to block
doubleclick.espn.com - hard to block
And that's over-simplified to make it obvious, much more likely is that they use a hostname like "a1.espn.com"
It isn't really feasible for smaller sites to use DNS aliasing for their ad-networks. But anybody site that is bigger than a one-man operation can do it.
Regarding AdBlock & Wladimir Palant its creator: He wrote me by email, 1st mind you, stating "hosts are a shitty solution" to which I replied this:
"Show us that adblock can do more for added speed, security, reliability, & anonymity than hosts files can, + that adblock does it more efficiently than hosts do"
Which on my latter 'point-in-challenge' on efficiency he was proven in research by others to be MASSIVELY inefficient -> https://blog.mozilla.org/nneth... & Palant can't show adblock does more (especially crippled by default as it is, 'souled-out' to GOOGLE no less).
Additionally - I sent Wladimir Palant that challenge in response to his statement, & from 2 different email addresses I keep no less!
Result? This:
Still no answer from him to myself in regard to my challenge put to him to this very day MONTHS later (that tell you anything? It did me - he knows his addon is far inferior to hosts and certainly less efficient by far also) - Wladimir Palant RAN like a scared rabbitt...
I only tell it how it is on hosts' superiority vs. AdBlock & any browser addon (or combo of them, from a SINGLE FILE you already natively possess no less - vs. "bolting on" more redundant & inefficient complexity + room for failure/breakdown) - funniest part is, Wladimir Palant (& his running) does as well!
APK
P.S.=> Hosts are a superior solution that even fixes DNS redirect security issues (vs. browser addons & their inefficiencies + messagepassing overheads as well as myriad lack of abilities hosts have from 1 single file that is part of the IP stack itself - faster, more efficient, & less redundant as well, since TCP/IP has 45++ yrs. of refinement & optimization applied to it, & runs in a higher CPU serviced ring of privelege & operations in kernelmode vs. slower usermode layering over browsers slowing them more, & hosts = 1st resolver queried by default by the OS itself as well - MULTIPLE bonuses)... apk