Help, Questions and General Discussion

[futpib]

If you have a question, need help, unsure if something is an issue, have something else to say, whatever else — post it here.

[ghost]

Just a word to remind that disabling/removing Adblock Plus/Edge on the basis that Policeman handles external connections is a wrong approach. Many sites, more and more in fact, maybe because they realize how many of their external calls for ads/tracking are handled by blocking tools, have chosen to include those ads/trackers within their very own pages, with no external calls. In this scenario Policeman can do nothing. This is why I believe Adblock Plus/Edge and Policeman are complementary and therefor both required.

[Corrodias]

I enabled "Replace with placeholder" under "Handle blocked objects". I am blocking all "objects". However, when I view a YouTube page, where the video would be is an empty, black rectangle. The menu correctly reports that the object is being blocked. I was expecting to see a light colored rectangle with the shield icon in it, as I have seen elsewhere.

Unrelated, second question: Do you think it would be a reasonable request to make placeholders clickable to temporarily allow them, as NoScript does? I think Policeman will better suit my needs, but I have grown accustomed to clicking videos to enable them.

[excalibur1234]

is it possible to use policeman INSTEAD of noscript and have the same (or even better) level of protection? or does policeman complement noscript?

btw, thanks a lot for this great tool!

[Halibut80]

@excalibur1234 https://github.com/futpib/policeman/issues/93#issuecomment-67614507

[ghost]

Just installed Policeman 0.18 Public Release.

Great achievement. Those who have participated or at least followed the development might get things right, but for others as myself who discover new possibilities there may be a problem to understand how to achieve a new option.

I read "Simple domains blacklist (just a file with domains) and hosts file format support" Problem for me, for any user of Policeman who did not attend the Policeman Github Winter Courses, is how to achieve this? I know how to add a Policeman formatted rule set, but how must one proceed to add a "Simple domains blacklist (just a file with domains) and hosts file format support"

Thanks

[heforfree]

@Zylinder you want add your url to Simple domains blacklist? or you can find that Simple domains blacklist file?

https://github.com/futpib/policeman-rulesets/tree/master/examples

[futpib]

@Zylinder See https://github.com/futpib/policeman/wiki/Supported-file-formats

[heforfree]

@futpib but it not block them if it will origin?can you also provide way to block them completely? and a one way to policeman wont show them on destination.since maybe user infected with malware,virus..

[ghost]

@heforfree, @futpib, thanks but I've gone through what you mention already. What I do not know how to do is to add a simple domains blacklist or a hosts formatted file.

If I go to Policeman Preferences, Import, I cannot import a text file, it's refused. It is this procedure link that I have not yet understood. I've spent a half/hour (nonsense compared to you guys' work), I'm not more retarted than the average (I hope) yet I miss something which must be obvious... except for me.

[heforfree]

just in ruleset manager select " install link" and add below link.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/futpib/policeman-rulesets/master/examples/simple_domains_blacklist.txt

in below page you must select "raw" then add it as link or save it as name.txt and use install file https://github.com/futpib/policeman-rulesets/blob/master/examples/simple_domains_blacklist.txt

[ghost]

@heforfree commented on 18 janv. 2015 16:05 UTC+1:

just in rulset manager select " install link" and add below link.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/futpib/policeman-rulesets/master/examples/simple_domains_blacklist.txt

in below page you must select "raw" then add it as link or save it as ruleset and use install file

https://github.com/futpib/policeman-rulesets/blob/master/examples/simple_domains_blacklist.txt

Thanks but :
1- I find no "Install link"
2- What do you call the Ruleset Manager? 3- I wish to add either a home-made domains blacklist, how to add it?

Forget it, this is beyond me.

[heforfree]

1+2 i mean Manage Rule set.where the ruleset are.and on bottom of that you can find install link about:policeman#rulesets-manager 3.you can save the simple_domains_blacklist.txt and give it any name and i dont see any http or www so just add other part of url

[futpib]

@Zylinder

I guess our UI is too fancy.

[bastik-1001]

@Zylinder for the blacklist I was able to create some_filename.txt with example.com another-example.org as content, one domain per line and install it. For me it was not rejected.

The hosts file should work similar, though I have no interest in including my hosts file in policeman.

[ghost]

@heforfree @futpib @bastik-tor , great news : I finally made it. Mama mia. A thousand and one thanks to all of you, really nice to help the blind man I was...

1. I was reasoning on the basis of an import/export rules, so I proceeded accordingly from Options/Import
2. I had never noticed the Install file - Install link buttons in the Manage Rule Sets area.

Wow. Coffee? Thanks a lot. This is not the first time I miss something which is right under my eyes. Nevertheless I had a lack about the Options construction, about its logic. So : I feel better, I hate it when I feel more retarted than the average (if Average is in the room, it wasn't meant for you!)

[ozar]

Hello, I'm having an issue here with Policeman .18

In General Preferences: If I set "left button click" to Open popup, the window opens but it's very small, cutting off some of the domain information. Sometimes, clicking on one of the drop down arrow buttons makes the window go ahead and open fully revealing the hidden info.

If I set "On hover" to Open popup, the window opens fully, showing all domain info, as it did in the previous Policeman release.

Am I doing something wrong, or is this the expected behavior of the latest release? Sorry if this is covered elsewhere and I've missed it. Thank you.

[ghost]

Hum... I've installed a simple 2 item test blacklist file but neither one of the 2 urls are blocked.

Options/Manage rule sets/Installed sets : Blacklist of 2 domains (Enabled) - OK and a xyz.ruleset in my Firefox profile \policeman\rulesets - OK xyz.ruleset is stricly identical to my source file (test.txt)

File is composed of : neowin.net melty.fr

But neither neowin.net (called from bookmarks) nor melty.fr (called from a site) is blocked... Any idea or is it -- if not me -- my Firefox which is problematic?

[heforfree]

@Zylinder as #63 still open so it should not work and for me to not working

[ghost]

OK @heforfree thanks -- We'll remain on standby then.

[futpib]

@Zylinder @heforfree Well, I thought they were working OK, otherwise I wouldn't mention them in the release notes.

[futpib]

@ozar Actually I've seen that with Nightly. It ran on Xephyr and I mistakenly thought it was his fault somehow, but now that you mention it, I reproduced it on my Xorg. What Firefox version are you running?

Opened #157.

[ghost]

@futpib commented on 18 janv. 2015 20:56 UTC+1:

@Zylinder @heforfree Well, I thought they were working OK, otherwise I wouldn't mention them in the release notes.

Being able to use rulesets built on the source of a simple text file is very nice but personally I consider it as a true extra feature far ahead of RequestPolicy's concept. I mean, IMO, this extra feature is both a lot of work and beyond the scope, the concept of filtering what websites communicate one another. But, you're doing it and it'll come out fine. Tougher is the aim more the incidents arise before the total reliability, we all know that. But looks like the toughest is accomplished, the stage now is that of polishing, as I see it.

Policeman is really a very nice work, not only does it continue where predecessors seem to have stopped but moreover it ads extra features, many. I'd just love to help more, should it be by sharing more testings. Point is I don't encounter issues or when I do i come here and find out they're already being processed if not resolved with regular updates betas included.

So : you have a bunch of guys and gals (I hope!) thankful for your work, your commitment to a better Web.

This is the end :) ... of the chapter!

[futpib]

I'm thinking about allowing all requests to Firefox's built-in schemes (what's called "chrome destination" in popup) by default, since there is really no networking involved at all. It seems, such requests are really of no concern for a user, but having them blocked may break stuff (#142 and also some thing in compatibility ruleset). Does this make sense? I mean, will anybody miss "chrome destination" and if you will then why?

[somini]

It would certainly simplify things.

[ozar]

@futpib Yeah, my Firefox is 35.0 on Linux. I see you've opened a bug report regarding this issue and closed it already with a commit. Thanks for checking it out and fixing it. I really do like this extension and certainly appreciate your hard work on it.

[heforfree]

@futpib as you no send or recive happen allow them if you want.

[ghost]

Here I've allowed Everything-All to Chrome Destination when I discovered it solved an issue I had encountered with RequestPolicy, that of RSS feeds. Not allowing Chrome Destination would block the RSS available feeds on a website to show (to popup from the RSS button). There must be other advantages but this is the only one I encountered.

Concerning Chrome Origin -> websites (all?) I haven't allowed it yet, even if I've encountered once and once only an issue with an add-on (Blockulicious) when sending the LicenseID for an upgrade : the connection to their server required Chrome Origin -> All (couldn't test with their server only as the connection could not appear in Policeman's popup since it did not open a page).

What are the practical consequences in terms of privacy be it Chrome destination or Origin is hard to understand for a non techie. I can say that allowing Chrome Destination shows on many sites that doing so lets the site open several about:blank pages... and so what ?

At this point we are dealing with deeper concerns, at least for the average user.

[requiredregistration]

i use [Chrome destination] to stop automatic playback in youtube

edit: i allow it temporarily to start the video playback manually

[ghost]

@requiredregistration commented on 19 janv. 2015 12:02 UTC+1:

i use [Chrome destination] to stop automatic playback in youtube

edit: i allow it temporarily to start the video playback manually

Now that's interesting. I'll have to give it a try, especially now that Youtube has changed recently its playback management.

[heforfree]

@futpib i must ask you to sure,which request are blocked to chrome destination? i again go to youtube and set reject youtube.com to chrome destination and but i see it allow even with reject.so i think it allready done

[somini]

Just change this in the about:config

media.autoplay.enabled

[atomGit]

wow - thanks for your work! finally, a very attractive alternative to the largely defunct Request Policy :)

i am really liking this extension - i like the clean and simple, yet powerful pop-up UI

couple small things i noticed... the pop-up UI gets cropped when it fills the height of the screen, but not the width, and a vertical scroll-bar is drawn (the right edge of the UI is covered with the scroll-bar)

! would be nice to override a global rule (rule set) on a per-site basis - example: i don't want to be annoyed by having to allow site-to-site requests for every site, yet on a few i might want to disallow JS (same domain to same domain)

consider allowing a R-click on tool-bar icon with the same options as for other click events

consider allowing to edit the persistent rules - maybe dbbl click displays the rule in the already available combo/input controls at the top so it can be edited and saved - i'm also wondering if allowing RegExp's in the URI's might be useful

documentation is needed - i'll mail you about that (i can help)

i can't believe how well this sucker looks and works and it's only at v0.1* - very well thought out

THANKS again!

[aimtsou]

Two questions for the developer: 1) Why some scripts appear to be called multiple times instead of one time? 2) Is it possible to disable one script instead of all? Will it be available in a later version?

[Halibut80]

@aimtsou 1) Maybe this https://github.com/futpib/policeman/issues/154 2) https://github.com/futpib/policeman/issues/81 For now you can make custom ruleset for that.

[neurodiverseEsoteric]

I'm now on Xubuntu 14.10 with the node packaged (npm) version of coffee-script. The build script is not working at all. Judging by the way the text looks when I open it in "mousepad" with a "kate" color scheme, it appears to be something about the syntax that isn't compatible with my system. How can I fix that?

[futpib]

@esotericDisciple What exactly it says when you execute it?

[neurodiverseEsoteric]

If I run 'bash build.sh --pack' it just shows the function printouts. If I run 'sh build.sh --pack' I get the following two messages: build.sh: 46: build.sh: Bad substitution build.sh: 47: build.sh: Bad substitution

[futpib]

@esotericDisciple It's a bash script, so what is the output of bash build.sh --pack? Does 'build' directory appear after you run it?

[neurodiverseEsoteric]

"Performing clean... Compiling coffee to js..." Nothing else is said...or done, it seems.

[futpib]

@esotericDisciple Can coffee be found in your PATH? EDIT: Nevermind, it prints "command not found" when it can't find it.

[futpib]

@esotericDisciple Well, I have no idea what is going wrong. Can you please run bash -x ./build.sh and send the output to me?

[neurodiverseEsoteric]

https://gist.github.com/futpib/a93eeb248fb8a9c9dd0e EDIT by futpib: pasted into a gist

[futpib]

@esotericDisciple Very strange, looks like coffee -cbp build/lib/content-policy.coffee fails, but prints nothing to stderr. I have npm coffee-script-1.8.0 installation too, and it works fine for me. Next step would be to find out why exactly coffee fails. I believe I can't help you with that, sorry.

[neurodiverseEsoteric]

I finally found out what the problem was; it was related to the same issue as this one: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13461638/installing-coffee-script-on-ubuntu-installs-all-the-files-correctly-but-command Uninstalling the Ubuntu package "node" and manually linking /usr/bin/nodejs to /usr/bin/node allows the build.sh script to run successfully.

[Ulf3000]

Hi i registered because i wanted to adress the situation with other adblockers.

" I thought about supporting easylist-format (or whatever it's called, I mean the rules format adblock uses) from the start, if that's what you ask about. I think there is no real benefit in supporting it, since we already have adblock who does it well, and policeman can coexist with adblock.

Honestly, unless you have a good argument, I won't implement it anytime soon."

i made a new profile and tried every adblocker on Mozilla page and the problem is sometimes the adblocker runs before your addon and sometimes it doesn´t. best would be if it runs after the adblocker because then it doesn`t show all the pesky doubleclick goglesyndication entrys and stuff the adblocker should already be done with, which obfuscates policemans widget and makes it hard to read/controll.

a real downside and probable bug is: adblockers use rules to re-format the page and how to hide objects to make it look nice , if policeman runs before the adblocker(90% of times) , these rules can´t apply since policeman already caught the adservers first and the adblocker does nothing in this case(not all the time but happend to me quite frequently)and the site has wholeswith no content or content cramped together! so thats a real incompatibility and major pain imho.

so either it would be enough to force policeman to run after the adblocker(then all ad and tracker won´t show up in policeman and style rules apply corretly). that's actually the best solution, everybody can choose his favourite adclocker. but i read its not really possible to change order of load of addons.

so if thats not possible you could really implement the easylist and then your addon would all the more enjoyable imho. blend tracker entrys out or recolor them to violett or something like that , would be badass imho and really helpfull!

already thanx for this piece of beauty though , like i said on mozilla reviews i wanna go with policeman alone , my techy friends were all on fire too when i showed them your addon.

its really better than the other addons. for example i´ve chosen img and css for anyone to anyone. so i can use forums and stuff correctly(porn and ads then get stil caught by the adblcoker and make the internet at least readable).
on my anime streaming site i´ve only allowed one video hoster so the pages load faster. on another site i allowed all hosters though , since they are often down. this is badass and the functionality of noscript nor other addons can do that so conveniently with filtering for media images scripits , its actually much faster to configure for correct browsing, a new noscript installation takes like weeks with endless allowing and blcoking and reloading lol^^! this will be may main security addon for the foreseeable future , i checked on inline scripts but even the worsts cracking sites and even fake warez sites don´t have any problematic or any at all inline scripts as far as i could see. just onclicks and other easy stuff so that is not of my concern. firefox is sandboxed.

i love you man lol XD

ps : scrolling for the widget should be implemented so its doesn´t grow over a specific size when watching the single entrys in the filter view

edit: adding blocklist format would also give us the ability to block a single specific item on demand , while leaving the filtering by type intact

[somini]

µBlock has a version for Firefox now, there no need to use bloated AdBlock Plus anymore. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases I can confirm it coexists peacefully with Policeman.

[Ulf3000]

A temporary fix for the problem i described above is to , disable policeman before closing firefox and next time it loads up , enabling policeman. since i rarely ever close firefox thats OK for me right now , still i would like to know a way to delay the startup of policeman and everything would be good i even thought about implementing a file access delay on the xpi, but found nothing to achieve that.

[futpib]

I believe that #54 is about the same problem @Ulf3000 is talking about. (Just mentioning it here to make these notes easier to find)

[Ulf3000]

nope thats not my problem, my problem is simply that i don´t want to block ads with policeman... so policeman has to load after the adblocker addon loads, a temporary fix is to start firefox with policeman disabled and then enabling it afterwards!

[ghost]

@somini commented on 30 janv. 2015 12:08 UTC+1:

µBlock has a version for Firefox now, there no need to use bloated AdBlock Plus anymore.

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/releases

I can confirm it coexists peacefully with Policeman.

Quite true. I've installed it for testing (after having backuped my FF profile and removed AdBlock Edge) and it runs very well with Policeman. uBlock & Policeman is a winning team. I'm keeping uBlock because of obvious advantages over Adblock, in the same way Policeman has over RequestPolicyContinued.

In my opinion it is not Policeman's role to block ads, its function as I see it is to manage external calls a site performs. I understand that futpib has gone on a lot of extra work to satisfy requests for extra filtering, but this extra is the work of a blocker, Adblock or uBlock.

So, with Policeman handling the external calls and uBlock managing what is loaded, where is the problem? I can say also that with Policeman in the arena uBlock has much, much less work to perform when indeed remains under its power what is from the site itself or what is included with what the user will have authorized to be called.

Let's not make things complicated. An add-on, an application, a software starts with a simple idea, then it gets bloated not if it improves itself but when it skips on the temptation to add functions (with sometimes the idea to access a "universal" range of possibilities) that often, so often lead to a bloated application and add confusion to most users who wish a good product aimed at what it is intended for.