Anonymous data is a tricky subject in general. If you consider single points of data they may all on their own not identify anyone, but put together they may be specific enough to identify someone. This is also true on a larger scale. Data collectors that on their own can be considered to anonymize their data can in some cases be correlated to connect individuals between sources and get more information. Rinse, repeat, and you've got enough of a basis to identify someone.
Correct, Casper. It is rather easy to couple data to a person in such a case. They have done a lot of research on it. It is one of the objections against governmental agencies collecting so much metadata.
I had this extension installed until I tried to enable one of its features and the privacy policy "popped up". After giving it a quick read I was stumbled and searched it up on youtube. And guess who popped up, my favorite tech related youtuber quidsup to give it a final consisive roast :).
I found this very useful. However it is now May 2021 and is this presentation still relevant? Or as Popper Blocker mended their ways???? Can anyone advise? Cheers
I don't know about privacy but sometime in 2022 Poper Blocker started popping up every time they blocked a popup. In other words, I was just trading the website proprietor's popups for Poper Blockers. Same number of clicks to get rid of annoying popups. So I uninstalled it. Still have AdGuard and AdBlockPlus installed.
If Popper Blocker is malicious and should be replaced, what do you suggest replacing it with? I use Brave Shields and uBlock Origin at their highest settings, but neither of them prevent popups. Other extensions that purport to block popups don't work either. Popper Blocker is literally the _only_ popup-blocking extension that works.
You're saying Popper Blocker. The product is called Poper Blocker. The fact that it has a nearly identical logo to Popper Stopper, and misspells it's name set off some alarm bells in my head. That and the fact that it claims it needs to track the sites you visit to block overlays. Well, why would it need to do that?
Yes, but I didn't want to block ads that support content creators. I just wanted to get rid of annoying popups from sites that are notorious for spamming them.
Guys, look... don't use closed source addons for your browser. That is just a bad idea in general. And also stay away from sites that are ad-cancer. At least do these things on your daily machines. It's not that hard.
That's practical if you only want to support certain content creators. But if you want to support every content creator you watch, known and unknown then it's just not practical. There's more work whitelisting url's than not using the extension all together.
havent booted up my linux drive in about a year, does firefox not support AdBlock Plus anymore? works like gangbusters with NoScript on Win(not gonna say).
I am not surprised that this extension is malicious. Think about it, what are the two things that people most would install an extension for? Ads and unwanted popups. If you are malicious and some advertising-company or data-mining-company pays you then this is where your focus is. I use an adblocker myself (because it simply is too annoying to not to) and I use a Javascript-whitelist (NoScript) which blocks the popups in most of the cases (usually that is being initiated with a Javascript and mostly another one than the main one) but you have got to be careful. I recommend to block malicious IP-addresses on the OS-level. Go to switchedtolinuxcom/privacy-resources/ for a long list of those websites, add these to your hosts-file and all those websites get blocked because every time when your browser tries to load these websites it connects to your own network-address (127001) instead. In Arch the location is etc/hosts. This list mostly focuses on privacy and security but the worst advertising also gets blocked. Perfect? No, but it will at least block many malicious websites and it only takes around a minute to download the file and edit your hosts file. Obviously you should update this file regularly because new malicious domains keep popping up. No pun intended.
not to start the whole requesting everything, but any chance of a video similer to this with ghostery? it's an anti tracker which does an excellent job but ironically it also tracks it's users. also while im on the subject the popular website editior/theme stylish was removed from chrome/firefox due to spying on it's users. and the next recommended which is supported on their site userstyles is called stylus.
I noticed you were using Deepin in the VM and you said in an earlier video that they stopped tracking users. I just decided to wait a bit and see how things evolve? Is it fully safe to use now? 'Cause I must admit, it looks awesome.
and however buys that co. later, gets all that data. For all we know, there is a handshake deal to sell the company 10 years later to Google ads or some other massive data spy.
the only popup blocker i use (though in Firefox i use to use Adblock Edge which is no longer developed .. .and last i saw the ABE dev even suggested people all use Ublock Origin... and that they are using UO, themselves now) is from "Gorhill" ... Ublock Origins and/or (sort of a content blocker vs traditional popup blocker) Umatrix
If that much data is collected it’s not anonymous. That’s very easily identifiable.
Anonymous data is a tricky subject in general. If you consider single points of data they may all on their own not identify anyone, but put together they may be specific enough to identify someone. This is also true on a larger scale. Data collectors that on their own can be considered to anonymize their data can in some cases be correlated to connect individuals between sources and get more information. Rinse, repeat, and you've got enough of a basis to identify someone.
Alcesmire exactly what I mean yes.
Correct, Casper. It is rather easy to couple data to a person in such a case. They have done a lot of research on it. It is one of the objections against governmental agencies collecting so much metadata.
IP address?! Oh, hell, yeah, NOT anonymous!!!
Great video as always! Informative, in-depth and to the point. Well done.
Yup, that was a bit of a shock when mozilla pulled it off my PC. Adguards popup blocker userscript has been a super good replacement.
I had this extension installed until I tried to enable one of its features and the privacy policy "popped up". After giving it a quick read I was stumbled and searched it up on youtube. And guess who popped up, my favorite tech related youtuber quidsup to give it a final consisive roast :).
Fantastic job as always Quids!
i was getting Trojan alert by malwarebytes on that extension so that is a big red flag
That KDE desktop is stylish, I have to say...
Thanks for sharing this is sad that they are something like this gonna have to remove it, i really care to much about my privacy to accept this
I found this very useful. However it is now May 2021 and is this presentation still relevant? Or as Popper Blocker mended their ways???? Can anyone advise? Cheers
I don't know about privacy but sometime in 2022 Poper Blocker started popping up every time they blocked a popup. In other words, I was just trading the website proprietor's popups for Poper Blockers. Same number of clicks to get rid of annoying popups. So I uninstalled it. Still have AdGuard and AdBlockPlus installed.
If Popper Blocker is malicious and should be replaced, what do you suggest replacing it with? I use Brave Shields and uBlock Origin at their highest settings, but neither of them prevent popups. Other extensions that purport to block popups don't work either. Popper Blocker is literally the _only_ popup-blocking extension that works.
Looks like they've changed their privacy policy. Not sure how long ago
Can you make a tutorial to how to figure out if an addon you have installed is actually doing something?
You're saying Popper Blocker. The product is called Poper Blocker. The fact that it has a nearly identical logo to Popper Stopper, and misspells it's name set off some alarm bells in my head. That and the fact that it claims it needs to track the sites you visit to block overlays. Well, why would it need to do that?
Just run ublock origin.
Yes, but I didn't want to block ads that support content creators. I just wanted to get rid of annoying popups from sites that are notorious for spamming them.
That isn't a problem at all, just put the ones you want to support into the whitelist.
but ublock origin doesn't block certain types of popups. Unfortunately, Poper blocker was the best at that...
Guys, look... don't use closed source addons for your browser. That is just a bad idea in general. And also stay away from sites that are ad-cancer. At least do these things on your daily machines. It's not that hard.
That's practical if you only want to support certain content creators. But if you want to support every content creator you watch, known and unknown then it's just not practical. There's more work whitelisting url's than not using the extension all together.
havent booted up my linux drive in about a year, does firefox not support AdBlock Plus anymore? works like gangbusters with NoScript on Win(not gonna say).
I am not surprised that this extension is malicious. Think about it, what are the two things that people most would install an extension for? Ads and unwanted popups. If you are malicious and some advertising-company or data-mining-company pays you then this is where your focus is. I use an adblocker myself (because it simply is too annoying to not to) and I use a Javascript-whitelist (NoScript) which blocks the popups in most of the cases (usually that is being initiated with a Javascript and mostly another one than the main one) but you have got to be careful.
I recommend to block malicious IP-addresses on the OS-level.
Go to switchedtolinuxcom/privacy-resources/ for a long list of those websites, add these to your hosts-file and all those websites get blocked because every time when your browser tries to load these websites it connects to your own network-address (127001) instead.
In Arch the location is etc/hosts.
This list mostly focuses on privacy and security but the worst advertising also gets blocked.
Perfect? No, but it will at least block many malicious websites and it only takes around a minute to download the file and edit your hosts file. Obviously you should update this file regularly because new malicious domains keep popping up. No pun intended.
I've been doing internet banking and other data sensitive related tasks while having this addon active. Should I be worried? Will delete asap
Why would you even need this addon ? I haven't seen a popup for ages and firefox deals with them for me.
not to start the whole requesting everything, but any chance of a video similer to this with ghostery? it's an anti tracker which does an excellent job but ironically it also tracks it's users. also while im on the subject the popular website editior/theme stylish was removed from chrome/firefox due to spying on it's users. and the next recommended which is supported on their site userstyles is called stylus.
I noticed you were using Deepin in the VM and you said in an earlier video that they stopped tracking users. I just decided to wait a bit and see how things evolve? Is it fully safe to use now? 'Cause I must admit, it looks awesome.
Andrei Predescu that was Manjaro version of deepin which i believe to be safe as it uses the arch installer not the official deepin store.
yea i was about to download it but i looked at the privacy policy and it said some shit about IPs so hell no
:( is there a safer option to block pop ups?
What about the button in the settings that turns off data sharing, was this added recently?
60fps scrolling is nice
I had that installed a few months ago and had a hunch it was suspicious, so I ended up removing it. Good thing I didn't use it for too long.
Can you reverse engineer it so you can tell us exactly whats it's exactly doing.
Ah lovely, how Facebookesque with it's indefinite storage of personal info. Don't see how that could ever become an issue at all...........
and however buys that co. later, gets all that data. For all we know, there is a handshake deal to sell the company 10 years later to Google ads or some other massive data spy.
I used this extension in the past, ew 😣
the only popup blocker i use (though in Firefox i use to use Adblock Edge which is no longer developed .. .and last i saw the ABE dev even suggested people all use Ublock Origin... and that they are using UO, themselves now) is from "Gorhill" ... Ublock Origins and/or (sort of a content blocker vs traditional popup blocker) Umatrix
Realy sad that firefox removed it.. it was the best popup blocker for those who doesn't care about privacy..like me hhhhh^-^
What's the site you're using to get domain name details ?
e4rache DNS lookup (oops, correct answer below; misread the question) 👍
e4rache that is wireshark and its free.
wanted to install it unti it asked some super on the nose spy questions so i decided to look it up
Gets to the point at 1:50