| ▲ | bmacho 10 hours ago |
| A web extension is an unnecessary security risk. A userscript will do it just fine. edit: one of my previous attempt: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35229211 I actually have made it extensible, with closely coupled source of rules and domains; but then I lost it Edge forgot all my userscripts :( |
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| ▲ | londons_explore 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| User scripts have super wide permissions. For example a user script scoped to YouTube.com can make payments from any cards you have saved in Google pay. And most user scripts are so long a typical user won't be able to spot a couple of malicious lines amongst 10k lines of minified webpacked libraries. |
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| ▲ | rvnx 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | You also have to weight the benefits versus the "risk". For example, if you use FreeTube with SponsorBlock to improve your privacy and block ads, in fact you are sending to Cloudflare 100% of your YouTube watch history, and to SponsorBlock ("sponsor.ajay.io"). With Piped instances it's even worse, essentially escaping Google's tracking just to give our data to random strangers. If you are worried, just run a second Chrome session with NordVPN and uBlock Origin in a loose jurisdiction and browse YouTube unlogged. It's easy, simple, and you have the benefits of an audited platform and that reasonably legally confirm they don't store logs unless the court forced them: "we never log their activity unless ordered by a court never log their activity unless ordered by a court", but for that, the court has to find you as a user, which can be very complicated in practice. So much better than random strangers. | | |
| ▲ | hashiyakshmi 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | >If you are worried, just run a second Chrome session with NordVPN and uBlock Origin in a loose jurisdiction and browse YouTube unlogged. If you actually did this you would know that it works for all of a week or two before YouTube stops letting you watch videos until you login. | | |
| ▲ | Devorlon 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I found that hopping to different VPN servers is a mildly inconvenient workaround for that. |
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| ▲ | heavensteeth 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | SponsorBlock doesn't send video IDs to the server. https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlockServer/issues/25 | | |
| ▲ | lucb1e 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | (*anymore, as of late 2020 from a quick look. The parent comment may not have been wrong about that, just outdated info) |
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| ▲ | lucb1e 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > worse, essentially escaping Google's tracking just to give our data to random strangers I'd much rather send random tidbits of information, that are nearly useless in isolation, to strangers than to the central tracking corporation In the end, there is no way to reveal what information you're interested in when retrieving data, short of retrieving a ton of data and doing the filtering client-side, which is also an option with these third parties if you so desire | |
| ▲ | lvass 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Terrible advice. Not only youtube will precisely fingerprint you, nordvpn/tesonet/oxylab will also get data on you. | | |
| ▲ | rvnx 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Way better than the recommended "privacy" instances. NordVPN only sees that you connect to YouTube, they do not see the pages or videos that you are looking at, and from the perspective of YouTube, they only see requests from a very popular VPN where are millions of users. If you use the "privacy" instances, these "privacy" websites and Cloudflare knows precisely which videos you are watching. | | |
| ▲ | lvass 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Recommended by whom? I'm just saying your advice is terrible in general and takes no regard to how easy and powerful fingerprinting is nowadays, in google's perspective the only difference to using that VPN if you're "just" running chrome is that it also knows when you use a VPN, in other words, just giving one more data point. Also the average user is likely to install some nordvpn app if following your advice, which is a security nightmare, remember that company sells residential proxies. Also IIRC for youtube, alternative frontends don't tend to rely on someone else's endpoints. | | |
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| ▲ | latexr 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > If you are worried, just run a second Chrome session with NordVPN I feel like I’m on YouTube already. It’s not like they are free of criticism either. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NordVPN#Criticism | |
| ▲ | HK-NC 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I'm happy to give my watch history to some unknown in exchange for never ever seeing an ad. |
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| ▲ | bmacho 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > And most user scripts are so long a typical user won't be able to spot a couple of malicious lines amongst 10k lines of minified webpacked libraries. Exactly! That's why you should use 3 lines for it instead, that are - inspectable
- not updateable by the Chinese/Russians
- written by you anyway
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| ▲ | hexagonwin 19 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| can a userscript run before the page loads...? afaik it's not possible, so the browser gets to make double requests. |
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| ▲ | eviks 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The extension links to 50+ services, your script - to 1. Do you now suggest that every single user should figure out how to do it properly and replicate the extension in a script for no better alternative (you could instead spend part of that time reading the extension code and using your private copy) |
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| ▲ | bmacho 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | I don't think that not having all the services is a problem. On the contrary, I think it is an advantage for userscripts, that those only have the redirects a user explicitly adds. Tho I probably should've demonstrated first that it is possible, before advocating for it. The script I linked indeed only works for one website. Multiple websites with multiple rules, each with a list of instances (that often go offline for a time, so it is worth keeping them around, and make switching easy) indeed complicates it a bit. | | |
| ▲ | eviks 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | So what exactly is the advantage of having to code all the rules yourself for every service you want to use?? > complicates it a bit a bit of an understatement | | |
| ▲ | bmacho 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | > So what exactly is the advantage of having to code all the rules yourself for every service you want to use?? "having to code all the rules" is not that hard, in most cases you can just pass the whole URL, and the instance accepts it. Advantages: you don't get unwanted redirects from services, and you don't get unwanted redirects to instances. (Even tho the information about the instances will likely be concentrated at libredirect github issues. Chances are that some random person on the internet who has paranoid activities as a hobby will look into the instances, so you don't have to.) - - - I don't use many redirects. Nowadays I use exactly 0. But if I needed a redirect for example to xcancel, I would use my user-script as I had done it in the past before I lost it. I definitely wouldn't install a browser extension for it. | | |
| ▲ | eviks 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | > in most cases a slice(,) will do it since the relevant id is at a fixed position in the URL. In all cases that also involves actually finding the URLs, then there are non-most cases where a slice wouldn't do it. > Nowadays I use exactly 0 Exactly. If you ignore actual uses everything becomes trivial |
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| ▲ | udev4096 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Totally unrealistic. Instead either lock down extension permissions, use different browser profile or better yet use QubesOS for spinning up disposable browser VMs |
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| ▲ | Akronymus 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I personally prefer to use redirector to do it. It has served me quite well so far. https://einaregilsson.com/redirector/ |
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| ▲ | 1oooqooq 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| just disable auto update and have the same bad usability as user script. |
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