Ask Slashdot: Gaining Control of My Mobile Browser?

An anonymous reader writes: I run Firefox with NoScript and FlashBlock at home. Browsing is easy, and I only have to enable scripts on a few sites. If they have 20+ scripts, I just surf somewhere else. Fast forward to the mobile experience. I had an Android device, but now I have an iPhone. In addition to the popup problem, and the fake "X" on ads, the iPhone browsers (Safari, Chrome, Opera) will start to show a site, then they will lock up for 10-30 seconds before finally becoming responsive. If I switch back to another app and then return to the browser, Safari and Chrome have a little delay, but Opera delays 20+ seconds before becoming responsive again.

Firefox is not available on the iPhone, so I can't simply run NoScript. Chrome does not appear to have a NoScript equivalent for mobile. What solutions are you using to make mobile browsing work?

Comments

It is, sorta

[nospam007]

"Firefox is not available on the iPhone"
There's an app called virtualBrowser, which runs firefox, but you'll better have LTE.
You can try it out for free, but if you want to save installed extensions like noscript and adblock, you'll have to pay a monthly fee, 2 bucks if I remember.

There are also standalone adblocker apps. (weblock etc) I pasted my custom filters copied from adblock into mine and it works OK.

Why not just enjoy the experience

[Anonymous Coward]

Instead of dealing with malware in the Play store, you get to deal with no freedom in the App store. You knew the sword cut both ways when you switched, and now you're complaining?

You're not supposed to ask that

[rrohbeck]

Accept the walled garden. Even if you find a fix now Apple will probably break it with the next release.

Re:You're not supposed to ask that

[oodaloop]

Root the phone, remove Google apps, use alternative apps. Not terribly hard, and pretty much what I've done to my LG Google Nexus 5, but I choose to use a few Google apps. Why you trust Apple to track you appropriately but not Google would be a better question though.

Re:You're not supposed to ask that

[Em Adespoton]

On iOS you've got a few alternatives.
1) Set up a VPN, and run that VPN through privoxy to strip the junk.
2) Jailbreak and install Adblocker 2, Firewall iP, PrivaCy and if you want, Tor.

Ditch iPhone

[Carewolf]

Read subject. You can not get an alternative browser on iPhones, it is not allowed, all the "alternative" browsers on iPhones are just reskinned Safari because Apple does not allow alternative browsers. So if you are wondering how to get control over you phone again: Ditch iPhone!

Re:Ditch iPhone

[halivar]

You can not get an alternative browser on iPhones, it is not allowed,

Yes, you can.

all the "alternative" browsers on iPhones are just reskinned Safari because Apple does not allow alternative browsers

All iOS browsers use WebKit. That's completely orthogonal to the original question: are there iOS browsers that block ads and pop-ups? The answer is yes, there are.

Re:Ditch iPhone

[CaptBubba]

Mercury and Atomic Browser are the two big ones, both of which have integrated ad-blocking which is quite effective.

Don't even bother asking

[halivar]

All you'll get on Slashdot is "neener-neener" posts from Android fan boys telling you you deserve it for buy the Phone That Shall Not Be Named. What you should have done was ask Google, and it would have taken you to a number of browsers available for iOS that block banner ads. Question answered, no psychopathic schadenfreude.

Re:Don't even bother asking

[halivar]

In an attempt to actually answer the question, try the Mercury browser. Basically Safari + AdBlock. The others are usually crapware/adware. https://itunes.apple.com/us/ap...

Re:Don't even bother asking

[halivar]

He's not asking for a non-WebKit browser. He's asking for a browser that blocks ads and pop-ups, of which there are many for iOS. And yes, they all use WebKit. That has nothing to do with the question asked.

Partial answer using hosts.txt

[Anonymous Coward]

Run DD-WRT on router, put hosts.txt on USB drive, add this script to "firewall" commands:

#!/bin/sh

if test -s /tmp/mnt/sda1/hosts.txt
then
        cat /tmp/mnt/sda1/hosts.txt |
        sed 's/[[:space:]]*#.*$//g;' |
        grep -v localhost | tr ' ' '\t' |
        tr -s '\t' | tr -d '\015' | sort -u >/tmp/hosts0
        grep addn-hosts /tmp/dnsmasq.conf ||
        echo "addn-hosts=/tmp/hosts0" >>/tmp/dnsmasq.conf
        killall dnsmasq
        dnsmasq -u root -g root --conf-file=/tmp/dnsmasq.conf
fi

This blocks almost all ads in mobile Safari, but only works at home of course. The hosts.txt can be updated by sharing the USB or ssh to router, then reboot. This script is a bit different from the one on dd-wrt site that downloads hosts.txt on boot, but that script doesn't actually work.

There is no hope.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

"Mobile" is basically a trailer for the cryptographically sealed dystopia after the demise of the general purpose computer. Your options are basically 'consume that content, just the way its creator intended you to' or 'walk away'.

Android is slightly better, in that (while it is peddled by a massive surveillance-and-advertising vendor) it is fairly easy to buy a handset that will accept substantial modification without the blessing of the creator. iOS starts from an incrementally less user-hostile place; but Apple's dedication to lockdown is very, very, thorough and relatively competent. Short of using the phone as a VNC/RDP/ICA client and connecting to a real computer, you are mostly SOL.

Mercury and Atomic Browser

[RandCraw]

Both browsers are cheap and will block most ads. I've used Atomic for the past several years as my primary browser on my iPhone 4 and 5s, iPad 3, and iPad Mini retina, and it has worked very well on all. The browser is very configurable and makes much better use of small real estate than Safari. It's very rare that Atomic has let me down or that I have to fall back to using Safari or Chrome (maybe twice a year?).

I've used Mercury less than Atomic, but only because Atomic has worked well. The little I have used Mercury, I've had no complaints.

Alas there's precious little company support or user community for Atomic. If Mercury turns out to be better for this, I might be willing to switch.