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Comment by sdoering | Hacker News Reader

I know a lot of AdBlocking Tools/List that do not block Google Analytics or Adobe Analytics by default.

Do you know the ones that do?

Just to add to the others comments, get NoScript and you can control exactly who gets to run Javascript at all times. It makes the internet so much safer and you will be blown away at how many domains some sites are trying to run scripts from.

By the way, isn't there a way to do this on Firefox itself? It would be an interesting option along with "don't accept cookies; exceptions".

Gotta 2nd NoScript for blocking all detritus from wasting my data caps & cpu cycles, although the default white-list needs much purging out of the box.

For added goodness, I also run the Blender Add-On[1] for the sites I do allow on occasion. I value my privacy <b>MORE</b> than the marketeers do.

[1]https://github.com/meh/blender

Noscript is harmful, the dev sold out and showed Spyware ads on its own noscript website! Noscript didn't block it btw. Change user agent to Windows and visit the site, see uf it's still up. You can't trust noscript.

uMatrix (from gorhill=Raymond Hill, of uBlock Origin fame) is extremely useful. I haven't used NoScript in 5 years or so, so things might have changed - but compared to what I remember, uMatrix is no less capable (in fact, more capable), and much easier to use -- though sadly, still not at a level that a non-techie will use.

Ghostery, uBlock Origin. Running both in combination seems to get most bugs.

You are stealing from the websites and content creators who needs to track and exploit your personal information to provide the internet as we know it today. /s

uMatrix blocks all analytics by default.

I'm running uBlock + uMatrix. Very clean browsing experience. Also quite bare-bones before adding site specific rules, which probably won't suit everyone :)

uBlock Origin + EFF Privacy Badger is a really powerful combo and works fine

Isn't that overkill? EFF Privacy Badger states that it's a one-extension solution rather than having ghostery, adblock + others: https://www.eff.org/privacybadger (2nd FAQ)

I've never tried Privacy Badger myself, what's your reasoning for having both? Is it not quite as all-encompassing as it claims?

It's an anti-tracking extension, not an adblocker. uBlock Origin lets you sign up to custom lists and make custom rules which can include cosmetic filters. These are helpful for removing things from view even if they get loaded by your browser, which is darn convenient even though it's useless for preventing tracking.

With fingerprinting, what's the point of all this?

Browsers and Internet commections now have enough discoverable stuff via HTTP and JS to identify users uniquely enough that in 99% of cases the user's session can really get a unique id! Across publishers! Without third party cookies!!

Making it less reliable means the targeted ads are worth less money. Making it more difficult means it's less likely to be profitable.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/random-agent-...

That's great, but once you factor in all the people who downloaded this plugin and are otherwise slightly harder to fingerprint, it's still 99% accurate!

So now what?

I don't understand your logic here

There's more to profiling than profiles. Local network topology, for example.

Ahhh, got it. Any suggestions then?

I was saying the number of people who install a plugin that varies the user agent is tiny, and even then there are other ways to detect (just check out the lists of things, screen sizes etc.)

And the big picture is, regardless of these small imperfections, a digital fingerprint is over 95% accurate! So that's very valuable!

See https://secure.fanboy.co.nz Enhanced Trackers and Anti-Facebook lists

uBlock Origin (rule in Peter Lowe’s Ad server list) does, as does Steven Black's hosts file[1] (probably due to pulling from Peter Lowe's list).

I use the latter for network-level blocking (dnsmasq on a DD-WRT router; forced DNS redirection), and it works surprisingly well - even the ads on my Xbox One dashboard are blocked.

[1] https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

AdBlock doesn't block GA. AdBlock blocks ads, not on site analytics tools. To block GA, either set your browser to do not track or disable JS

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