<story><title>The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web</title><url>https://www.standard.co.uk/tech/fbi-recommends-ad-blocker-online-scams-b1048998.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>emacdona</author><text>I recommend using an ad-blocker while visiting that site :-&amp;#x2F;&lt;p&gt;Lately, I find myself using more and more plugins to make the &amp;quot;modern web&amp;quot; tolerable. To list a few:&lt;p&gt;Channel Blocker (lets me block channels from search results on Youtube); 
uBlock Origin; 
Disconnect; 
F.B Purity; 
Consent-O-Matic (auto fill cookie consent forms); 
Kagi Search; 
PopUpOFF; 
Facebook Container; 
Privacy Badger; 
ClearURLs; 
Return YouTube Dislike&lt;p&gt;Basically, if I visit a website and don&amp;#x27;t like the experience, I either never go back (Kagi lets me exclude it from search results) or find a plugin to make it tolerable.&lt;p&gt;What I really want now is the ability to exclude entire websites from any permissions I grant to plugins. I feel like in the last year, I&amp;#x27;ve read a couple stories about companies buying successful plugins and then using them to track you or show ads or whatever. I&amp;#x27;m worried this will be the next stage in the battle for our attention -- best case: companies will buy popular plugins to track us and show us intrusive ads; worst case: nefarious actors will buy them to scrape information we think is private and collect it.&lt;p&gt;IE: I just want to be able to say &amp;quot;Hey, Firefox... those permissions that I granted to plugins x, y, and z? They don&amp;#x27;t apply to www.myfavoritebank.example.com&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Is there a browser that has that feature yet? I spent a few hours trying to figure out if Firefox did. It did not appear to.&lt;p&gt;edit: Added semicolons to separate plugins in list b&amp;#x2F;c HN stripped the newlines from my comment.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dngray</author><text>&amp;gt; Consent-O-Matic (auto fill cookie consent forms)&lt;p&gt;This will modify the browser fringerprint making you more unique.&lt;p&gt;I would not install so many extensions as you&amp;#x27;re trusting a huge number of organizations&amp;#x2F;people with privileged access to your browser. Anything that modifies CSS, Document Object Model (DOM) will make your browser stand out.&lt;p&gt;We wrote a blog post about this: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.privacyguides.org&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;firefox-privacy-2021-update&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.privacyguides.org&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;12&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;firefox-privacy-20...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;That includes any extensions that modify what is requested etc. See:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;arkenfox&amp;#x2F;user.js&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;4.1-Extensions&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;arkenfox&amp;#x2F;user.js&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;4.1-Extensions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.privacyguides.org&amp;#x2F;desktop-browsers&amp;#x2F;#firefox&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.privacyguides.org&amp;#x2F;desktop-browsers&amp;#x2F;#firefox&lt;/a&gt;, you really don&amp;#x27;t need to do anything more than that.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Facebook Container&lt;p&gt;etc, not needed unless you login to multiple Facebook accounts.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Disconnect&lt;p&gt;Not needed, you should enable Firefox&amp;#x27;s ETP Enhanced Tracking Protection, this includes anything on that list. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;support.mozilla.org&amp;#x2F;en-US&amp;#x2F;kb&amp;#x2F;enhanced-tracking-protection-firefox-desktop#w_what-enhanced-tracking-protection-blocks&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;support.mozilla.org&amp;#x2F;en-US&amp;#x2F;kb&amp;#x2F;enhanced-tracking-prote...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web</title><url>https://www.standard.co.uk/tech/fbi-recommends-ad-blocker-online-scams-b1048998.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>emacdona</author><text>I recommend using an ad-blocker while visiting that site :-&amp;#x2F;&lt;p&gt;Lately, I find myself using more and more plugins to make the &amp;quot;modern web&amp;quot; tolerable. To list a few:&lt;p&gt;Channel Blocker (lets me block channels from search results on Youtube); 
uBlock Origin; 
Disconnect; 
F.B Purity; 
Consent-O-Matic (auto fill cookie consent forms); 
Kagi Search; 
PopUpOFF; 
Facebook Container; 
Privacy Badger; 
ClearURLs; 
Return YouTube Dislike&lt;p&gt;Basically, if I visit a website and don&amp;#x27;t like the experience, I either never go back (Kagi lets me exclude it from search results) or find a plugin to make it tolerable.&lt;p&gt;What I really want now is the ability to exclude entire websites from any permissions I grant to plugins. I feel like in the last year, I&amp;#x27;ve read a couple stories about companies buying successful plugins and then using them to track you or show ads or whatever. I&amp;#x27;m worried this will be the next stage in the battle for our attention -- best case: companies will buy popular plugins to track us and show us intrusive ads; worst case: nefarious actors will buy them to scrape information we think is private and collect it.&lt;p&gt;IE: I just want to be able to say &amp;quot;Hey, Firefox... those permissions that I granted to plugins x, y, and z? They don&amp;#x27;t apply to www.myfavoritebank.example.com&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Is there a browser that has that feature yet? I spent a few hours trying to figure out if Firefox did. It did not appear to.&lt;p&gt;edit: Added semicolons to separate plugins in list b&amp;#x2F;c HN stripped the newlines from my comment.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>emacdona</author><text>For anyone curious as to how I solve the problem right now, I just have two separate Firefox profiles. One has a ton of plugins; I use it to browse the web. The other has no plugins; I use it to visit my bank&amp;#x27;s website.</text></comment>