-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 3.1k
Can you trust uBlock Origin?
After I added the privacy
permission to make uBlock Origin (uBO) reliable when it comes to blocking network requests, a lot of people questioned uBO's trustworthiness.
First, uBO is completely developed in full public view. All the sources and all the changes to the sources are fully accessible on GitHub.
Second, uBO does not have a dedicated server, it can't "phone home" with your browsing data, there is only GitHub, and GitHub is completely unrelated to uBO.
Third, I have no intent to ever monetize uBO. It started as a personal project, and it still is a personal project. So uBO has absolutely no interest in data mining you.
I think it's time I give examples of how requiring fewer permissions is not a sure sign of higher trustworthiness.
Chrome store: Web Protector - Reliable Phishing Protection (the extension no longer exists on the Chrome Web Store).
This extension requires the same permission as uBO, minus the privacy
one. Some might be inclined that it can thus be more trusted than uBO, which requires the privacy
permission.
However, Web Protector has a home server, and it does "phone home" as opposed to uBO (which has no home server in the first place).
For every web page you visit, you can see Web Protector sending behind-the-scene network requests to webovernet.com
:
This is just to demonstrate that the permissions alone do not tell the whole story. What must be assessed are:
- Is the code developed in full view?
- Under which license does the code fall?
- Is there a home server?
- What network requests are made by an extension behind the scene?
- uBO's logger allows you to see it's own behind-the-scene network requests (mainly to GitHub, for updating filter lists).
- How is an extension monetizing itself?
- Learning about this factor will help you best understand whether the extension's developer's interests are aligned or at odds with yours.
- Wiki home
- About the Wiki documentation
- Permissions
- Privacy policy
- Info:
- The toolbar icon
- The popup user interface
- The context menu
-
Dashboard
- Settings pane
- Filter lists pane
- My filters pane
- My rules pane
- Trusted sites pane
- Keyboard shortcuts
- The logger
- Element picker
- Element zapper
-
Blocking mode
- Very easy mode
- Easy mode (default)
- Medium mode (optimal for advanced users)
- Hard mode
- Nightmare mode
- Strict blocking
- Few words about re-design of uBO's user interface
- Reference answers to various topics seen in the wild
- Overview of uBlock's network filtering engine
- uBlock's blocking and protection effectiveness:
- uBlock's resource usage and efficiency:
- Memory footprint: what happens inside uBlock after installation
- uBlock vs. ABP: efficiency compared
- Counterpoint: Who cares about efficiency, I have 8 GB RAM and|or a quad core CPU
- Debunking "uBlock Origin is less efficient than Adguard" claims
- Myth: uBlock consumes over 80MB
- Myth: uBlock is just slightly less resource intensive than Adblock Plus
- Myth: uBlock consumes several or several dozen GB of RAM
- Various videos showing side by side comparison of the load speed of complex sites
- Own memory usage: benchmarks over time
- Contributed memory usage: benchmarks over time
- Can uBO crash a browser?
- Tools, tests
- Deploying uBlock Origin
- Proposal for integration/unit testing
- uBlock Origin Core (Node.js):
- Troubleshooting:
- Good external guides:
- Scientific papers