Speed and bandwidth improvements with Firefox Tracking Protection

Posted May 29, 2015 9:40 UTC (Fri) by Aissen (subscriber, #59976)
Parent article: Speed and bandwidth improvements with Firefox Tracking Protection

Regarding DNT vs tracking protection, it seems the ad network have what they deserved. We tried the "gentle" way by asking them to respect a user setting; they refused. Now they'll just have to live with the user blocking tracking by default.

Regarding ABP, it seems quite unfair to use it for this research: it includes a list of "acceptable ads", which could probably be the source of the additional recorded cookies. I won't go into the fairness of how this list is built.

Last but not least, if you're still using ABP, you should be moving to uBlock Origin, a much more efficient alternative. It uses less memory, and less CPU; see this research on Chrome for instance: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-vs.-ABP:-ef... . I've moved all my devices to use uBlock Origin (works in Firefox for Android too).

Speed and bandwidth improvements with Firefox Tracking Protection

Posted May 29, 2015 17:02 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (4 responses)

So I use ABE (fork of ABP without the payment escape hatch) with RequestPolicy. I tried uBlock Origin, but it seemed more of a hands-off tool than RP. Did I miss something or was RP basically making uBlock useless while both were installed?

Speed and bandwidth improvements with Firefox Tracking Protection

Posted May 29, 2015 19:58 UTC (Fri) by PaXTeam (guest, #24616) [Link] (3 responses)

did you actually mean RP (long dead) or RP Continued? regardless of that, i only use uBlock (Origin, since the fork) nowadays and see no need for either AB* or RP*. you do have to RTFM at least once to understand the GUI though ;).

Speed and bandwidth improvements with Firefox Tracking Protection

Posted May 29, 2015 21:19 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (2 responses)

Plain old RP. I think I tried RPC at some point, but maybe it didn't work with the sync add-on I also use (which is actually useless now since I haven't moved to the new account system). I'll have to try uBlock again. I definitely didn't read its docs :) .

Speed and bandwidth improvements with Firefox Tracking Protection

Posted May 29, 2015 23:21 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

uBlock improves rapidly and half the improvements are invisible unless you pop over to read the release notes now and again. Its dynamic filtering is really quite powerful (and just expanded again), but if it wasn't for the docs you wouldn't know the controls for it were even controls at all.

Speed and bandwidth improvements with Firefox Tracking Protection

Posted May 29, 2015 23:36 UTC (Fri) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

They should do the same as NoScript and pop a tab when it updates then. I'll have to try it out when I get back from vacation. Especially since it works on Android too.

Speed and bandwidth improvements with Firefox Tracking Protection

Posted May 30, 2015 12:05 UTC (Sat) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link] (1 responses)

"Regarding DNT vs tracking protection, it seems the ad network have what they deserved. We tried the "gentle" way by asking them to respect a user setting; they refused."

Let's not forget the role Microsoft played in making DNT totally meaningless by enabling it by default in IE.

MSIE improvements

Posted Jun 1, 2015 14:51 UTC (Mon) by dmarti (subscriber, #11625) [Link]

Microsoft has finally fixed the default DNT setting in MSIE.

http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/5-excuses-dismissing...

A modern MSIE plus the EasyPrivacy TPL is a pretty fast way to get protected. This is LWN so few of you probably have the browser in front of you, but next time you're on your uncle's computer, try this:

http://blog.aloodo.org/posts/easyprivacy-for-msie/

Speed and bandwidth improvements with Firefox Tracking Protection

Posted Jun 8, 2015 17:59 UTC (Mon) by pr1268 (guest, #24648) [Link]

We tried the "gentle" way by asking them to respect a user setting; they refused.

I'm unsure there even is a "gentle" way of doing this. Consider that the ad servers having to develop and implement some server-side solution to filter out DNT requests is akin to them having to spend extra resources to deploy something which will cut off their primary source of revenue. Hmm... tough decision—NOT!

Simply ignoring the flag is the easiest solution, and it doesn't affect the ad servers' revenue stream.

And Mozilla/Firefox proudly touting this "nifty privacy feature" is shady sales tactics at best; only the totally naïve would think DNT really works (false sense of privacy).

As for Microsoft enabling DNT by default on IE, that in and of itself is also shady tactics: "We've taken this extra step to ensure your privacy online!". Hogwash.

I was skeptical about DNT from the beginning. Still am. But, I do think Tracking Protection is a much better solution. We'll see...