Compare uBlockOrigin over AdblockPlus

[NolonQ]

Preliminary checklist

• [X] I have read the README
• [X] I have read the FAQs.
• [X] I have searched existing issues for my feature request. This is a new issue (NOT a duplicate) and is not related to another issue.
• [X] I have searched wont fix issues and this request is not among them
• [X] This is a feature request for the Cromite browser; not the website nor F-Droid nor anything else.

Is your feature request related to privacy?

Yes

Is there a patch available for this feature somewhere?

-

Describe the solution you would like

AdblockPlus is crap, please consider replacing it with uBlockOrigin. Might want to have a look here https://adguard.com/en/blog/adblock-plus-sells-ads.html https://adblockplus.org/en/privacy#what-is-personal-data

I'll be honest, i stopped reading their privacy policy after reading this BS:

We collect and process your personal data, such as website logs and data relating to subscription downloads, extension update checks (such data is collected and processed by Google, see Google Privacy Policy), emergency notifications and Issue Reporter data sent by you, for technical purposes. We mainly collect and process such data to prevent security attacks and are thus able to provide our services to you in a secure and data-efficient manner.

They hand over data to google, that's all i need to know.

Unrelated to this topic, any news on the cromite website and fdroid repo?

Describe alternatives you have considered

-

[uazo]

https://adguard.com/en/blog/adblock-plus-sells-ads.html https://adblockplus.org/en/privacy#what-is-personal-data

don't worry, the parts of code related to acceptable ads have been removed

We collect and process your personal data

cromite does not collect ANY data, or rather, to be precise, it collects data (being a browser) but does not send it to anyone. I realized this by writing down cromite's privacy policies (which is a sticking point for putting it in the store)

such data is collected and processed by Google

cromite does not send ANY data to google, neither now nor in the future thanks to the firewall patch. maybe there's still something to be done, like inhibiting the use of the chrome object of javascript, that's something I'm planning, please be patient

Unrelated to this topic, any news on the cromite website and fdroid repo?

for the site I will have to do that, it is blocking to put cromite in google play regarding the fdroid repo already exists, although it should be improved the communication of changes and inserted the icon

[NolonQ]

Thanks for the reply!

I understand that acceptable ads have now been removed, however introducing them in the first place and collecting some type of data and sharing it with google is an absolute no-go in my opinion, uBlock origin claims to not collect any type of data at all and the developer doesn't even accept donations to not be undermined by potential corruption. uBlockOrigin is also in my opinion the most effective adblocker that exists, the numbers of installes on the firefox addon page speak for them selves. 7 million+ users as of today. If it's to much work replacing adblock plus with ublockorigin, and you don't see a benefit in doing so, well screw it.

Why does google block cromite from being added to the playstore? I don't use that BS playstore anyways, but having cromite available on f-droid sure would be a nice thing. Visiting f-droid's site and searching for cromite shows no results. https://search.f-droid.org/?q=cromite&lang=en I asume it's just a matter of type, in the meantime github serves the purpose.

To be honest, i have no idea what this means: inhibiting the use of the chrome

[Universalizer]

Visiting f-droid's site and searching for cromite shows no results.

https://github.com/uazo/cromite/issues/64#issuecomment-1647306566

[uazo]

however introducing them in the first place and collecting some type of data and sharing it with google is an absolute no-go in my opinion

that feature has never been there since the introduction of adblock plus in cromite. no data, either before, now or in the future, will be sent outside your device without your consent. perhaps the misunderstanding stems from the fact that the version of adblock plus in cromite is not the version that is downloaded as an extension, but is a separate project, different from the 'extension' version.

uBlockOrigin is also in my opinion the most effective adblocker that exists

i have never compared ublock with adblock plus, they seem pretty similar to me. but that is something i will do. I leave this issue open to remind me. my version should be better than both, being able to block service worker requests.

Why does google block cromite from being added to the playstore?

is not what I wrote, also because google cannot block anything since it has not yet made the request in the store :) as a first step, the site and privacy policy must be created, then I can forward the request to the shop, and I would not understand why it should be blocked.

Visiting f-droid's site and searching for cromite shows no results.

see https://github.com/uazo/cromite#f-droid

I asume it's just a matter of type, in the meantime github serves the purpose.

ffupdater also allows installation and updating

[NolonQ]

I see, cromite collects no data and that also includes the builtin adblockplus. uBlock Origin as far as i'm concerned is superior to adblockplus and devinitely more trustworthy, i could never understand why the developer of bromite chose to use adblockplus over ublockorigin, i don't know how much of a different it would make but it's nice to hear that you will check it out!

Oh so google didnt block cromite, it seems that was a misunderstandingn. Right it wouldn't make sense for google to block cromite, never mind. (Expect that google would love to be a monopoly and force the whole world to use only their spyware browser. but that's unrealistic to be a block reason.)

So that repo is a work in progress i guess. Anyway cromite has a builtin update function that's really good! Don't need to update it with fdroid, it would only make things a little easier to update all apps at once in froid.

Never heard of ffupdater, thanks for sharing it. I would have closed the thread but if you like to keep it open as a reminder you're the boss here.

[NolonQ]

One more question if you don't mind, is there a cromite systemwebview that we can flash on our devices to get rid of googlewebview?

[superlex]

Hi guys 😊

i have never compared ublock with adblock plus, they seem pretty similar to me. but that is something i will do. I leave this issue open to remind me. my version should be better than both, being able to block service worker requests.

I don't know very well AdBlock Plus, but as I understand 1) uBlockOrigin (uBO) supports CSS styles injection while AdBlock Plus (ABP) doesn't, so with uBO you have better quality filtering, e.g. apkmirror:

Details

2) uBO supports more scriptlets injection to bypass anti-adblock and improve privacy. For example, if a website requires pagead2.googlesyndication.com, with ABP you have to whitelist it, while with uBO you can use ||pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/js/adsbygoogle.js$script,xmlhttprequest,redirect=noop.js or ##+js(no-fetch-if, pagead2.googlesyndication.com)

3) uBO supports cookies settings/removing, removing gdpr annoyances;

4) uBO sopports a lot of additional rules to improve privacy and limit tracking. You can take a look to its privacy filters list: https://ublockorigin.github.io/uAssets/filters/privacy.txt

5) Furthermore, uBO sopports AdGuard syntax to improve privacy and quality adblocking, and it has AdGuard dedicated lists:

! Ads minus EasyList
https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/ublock/filters/2_without_easylist.txt
! Ads (includes EasyList)
https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/ublock/filters/2.txt
! Privacy: Tracking Protection
https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/ublock/filters/3.txt
! Privacy: URL Tracking Protection (removing tracking parameters from URLs.)
https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/ublock/filters/17.txt
! Annoyances (cookies messages, popup, etc.)
https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/ublock/filters/14.txt

and others.

[drogga]

It's clear that uBlock Origin and even ADGuard are way, way better than AdBlock Plus, I just doubt that ABP will be ever be replaced with any of the 2 better alternatives and that they will work even close to how the Extensions/Add-Ons work in blocking unwanted stuff and annoyances, it will be awesome if somehow the potential implementation of any of the 2 works even better than the extensions, but it's doubtful. There are already couple related issues (open / closed) regarding this and I think it's basically pointless to create even more of the same and discuss the same things over and over again.

If someone doesn't like this comment, then I will delete it - no problem.

[superlex]

I suppose that a cons is that uBO is written in javascript and it requires more work to be done to be integrated into Cromite.

However, there is a third option: adblock-rust. It has almost the same capabilities of uBO but it's already implemented in Brave, so it should be easier to implement into Cromite 😊

[nicoursi]

The only thing I can say is that adblocking with fennec and ublockOrigin works 100% of the times and blocking goes undetected.

With Bromite/Chromite the ads either manage to show up anyway, or the websites detect the adblocker and they do not show the page.

I'm using Cromite only because of the black theme on websites, because fennec does not support it and their extension makes site loading painfully slower, otherwise I'd use Fennec

[superlex]

@nicoursi

Try adding AdGuard lists to your custom filters:

https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/android-content-blocker/filters/2.txt https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/android-content-blocker/filters/3.txt https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/android-content-blocker/filters/11.txt https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/android-content-blocker/filters/14.txt

Otherwise try Brave browser, it's chromium based so it supports dark websites.

@uazo What about kiwi patch to support desktop extensions? 99% we need only uBO, so maybe it can be optimized for that.

[nicoursi]

Try adding AdGuard lists to your custom filters:

It seems it solved my issue. I wonder why they are not in the default settings

[superlex]

I suppose because they aren't in the ABP default settings, anyway we could ask @uazo to add them (also if disabled by default). https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/android-content-blocker/filters/3.txt is important for better privacy too.

[uazo]

I wonder why they are not in the default settings

may be an idea.

I suppose because they aren't in the ABP default settings

really, the motivation is I was not aware of it!

[superlex]

Thank you uazo! :)

[aqtoo]

Despite the fact I'm unaware of the technical aspect of it all, I truly hope this does happen!

[svin24]

I suppose that a cons is that uBO is written in javascript and it requires more work to be done to be integrated into Cromite.

However, there is a third option: adblock-rust. It has almost the same capabilities of uBO but it's already implemented in Brave, so it should be easier to implement into Cromite 😊

I actually agree with the adblock-rust proposal. Brave has done a very good job integrating it into their browser and it will probably be unaffected by any change upstream(Google) makes in the near future.

[ankitshekhawat21]

My vote for ubock origin too , and 99% of the users asking for extension support only want it for Ublock Origin only , and the only reason to keep using multiple browsers is this only .

It will be much better for users and dev too , more users ,less issues for these requests too.

[uazo]

from https://github.com/uazo/cromite/issues/256#issuecomment-1898369565 (@foxjaw)

• CNAME support is traced in https://github.com/uazo/cromite/issues/247
• HTML filtering: I did not know this
• Response body filtering: already supported
• Browser launch: being integrated, adblock is available immediately
• Pre-fetching: disabled in cromite
• WebAssembly and Storage compression: cromite use c++

[Universalizer]

Uazo had already removed, Telemetry which was in-built or present in AdBlock Plus Eyeo.

[kunalagra]

I am having issues in some cosmetic filtering being not applied. Specifically, mail.google.com###nav > #speedbump being not applied.

This should block the ugly banner at top asking to use Gmail App.

The same thing works under Firefox + Unlock Origin.

[uazo]

mail.google.com###nav > #speedbump

I can check if you can reproduce the issue without using mail.google.com.

[kunalagra]

mail.google.com###nav > #speedbump

I can check if you can reproduce the issue without using mail.google.com.

Dropping mail.google.com also doesn't work for me.

[Nahanokino]

from #256 (comment) (@foxjaw)

* CNAME support is traced in [Dns CNAME support in Adblock Plus #247](https://github.com/uazo/cromite/issues/247)

* HTML filtering: I did not know this

* Response body filtering: already supported

* Browser launch: being integrated, adblock is available immediately

* Pre-fetching: disabled in cromite

* WebAssembly and Storage compression: cromite use c++

Please consider a use for uBlock that I rarely see mentioned by anyone, and personally is useful to me dozens of times per day, if not even dozens of times per hour : its dashboard.

It provides an immediate understanding of the hostility and garbage a web site will throw at users. I know I can block these things and I do, but the point for me is being able to decide at a moment's notice that this is a site I don't want to visit or use ever again.

This is not possible with Cromite, with which I have no idea what a site is doing. I can use a tool like the one at :

https://themarkup.org/blacklight

But it's obviously not the same as checking uBlock's dashboard while using a site, immediately.

Details

  

As others have said, and I join them, I don't use extensions on browsers. But I don't use browsers without uBlock either.

[GurrenLagann114]

Please consider a use for uBlock that I rarely see mentioned by anyone, and personally is useful to me dozens of times per day, if not even dozens of times per hour : its dashboard.

It provides an immediate understanding of the hostility and garbage a web site will throw at users. I know I can block these things and I do, but the point for me is being able to decide at a moment's notice that this is a site I don't want to visit or use ever again.

You can see from earlier in this issue, as well as newer ones, that the developer has never compared uBlock and AdBlock before, nor he thinks the former is (much) better than the latter despite being basic knowledge, and has no intention of implementing it, which throws all his 'privacy enhancements' into question.

[Bertklq1]

Please consider a use for uBlock that I rarely see mentioned by anyone, and personally is useful to me dozens of times per day, if not even dozens of times per hour : its dashboard. It provides an immediate understanding of the hostility and garbage a web site will throw at users. I know I can block these things and I do, but the point for me is being able to decide at a moment's notice that this is a site I don't want to visit or use ever again.

You can see from earlier in this issue, as well as newer ones, that the developer has never compared uBlock and AdBlock before, nor he thinks the former is (much) better than the latter despite being basic knowledge, and has no intention of implementing it, which throws all his 'privacy enhancements' into question.

Dunno whay the dev is so butthurt in implementing the best privacy practices into the app

[larena1]

Dunno whay the dev is so butthurt in implementing the best privacy practices into the app

Maybe if you'd make a small donation to the dev as an incentive for him to invest his spare time doing that when you by your own admission don't know anything.

It has been mentioned before but I also think Brave's AdBlock would be the best alternative to the current solution and also not require the addon interface. Do you think that'd be possible @uazo or is there anything speaking against that from the technical side?

[Nahanokino]

Is there a way in Cromite to block third-party fonts and third-party frames ? Not sure, maybe I just can't find it. That's another difference worth considering.

[uazo]

block third-party fonts and third-party frames

yes, the rules provide for the possibility of blocking them. see Advanced features in https://help.adblockplus.org/hc/en-us/articles/360062733293-How-to-write-filters

[uazo]

1203 adblockplus do not support rule as

||html-load.com^$document,popup

uBlock show:

[johnconner122]

Also cromite doesn't support filtering certain path/endpoint e.g: 1337x.*##:matches-path(/home).box-info

It should block following box only on /home:

Details


[uazo]

matches-path

yes, I confirm that. adblock uses different syntaxes than ublock. not even in the current latest version of snippets is that syntax present. in any case, in cromite, they would not be usable, because the use of snippets is not allowed, and even those allowed for the anti-circumvention list are only a few.

https://github.com/uazo/cromite/blob/4d68d344d465d5b4683591838f526e17ebd0395b/build/patches/Eyeo-Adblock-for-Cromite.patch#L4504-L4546

[uazo]

Incidentally, I realised that in brave, css filters are not applied by default, but only if aggressive mode is activated. I think I will allow the user to choose.

[sepehrbrj]

@uazo Cromite adblocker doesn't block ads on some sites. (such as zoomg.ir, farsroid.com, pedal.ir, etc.)

Used filter list: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/MasterKia/PersianBlocker/main/PersianBlocker.txt

I'm sure it's not a problem with the filter list as it blocks the ads in these sites in uBO.

[MicroBeast]

Isn't Cromite using EYEO codes? That's Adblock and Adblock Plus codes (ABP).

I think; don't feed Cromite with Filters built with UBO and AdGuard in mind. They won't work 100%.

Suggestion; in mean time, go to https://filterlists.com/ then filter for filterlist that "actually" support ABP (Software tab).

Note; Cosmetic Filtering is weak in Cromite. Don't expect much currently.

[Nahanokino]

Whatever you decide in this comparison, please think about providing some indication in Cromite of what hostile sites are doing, even if it's not a detailed dashboard as uBlock's. I know I will be repeating myself, but.

As I mentioned above, 99% of uBlock's utility for me is identifying these sites, which I am not able to do with Cromite after trying it for a while as my main browser; the result is additional hours of work and research on my part every day having to run sites constantly through Blacklight or webkoll or, honestly, just switching to Fennec / Mull in the end because I can check instantly with uBlock.

The solution to people shooting in the streets should not be that we all get armored vehicles to drive through them.

Likewise, I believe most people are misunderstanding the purpose of software for blocking trackers, malvertising, data mining, and more. The objective is to identify these horrific sites and avoid using them, avoid promoting them, avoid visiting them, and being able to ostracize and end this behaviour, or at the very least, stop ourselves from unknowingly going to those sites.

I feel completely blind browsing with Cromite in its current form, as good as it is blocking and hiding the harm, it is not useful at all in identifying this harm and telling the user, which should be the number one priority.

[uazo]

please think about providing some indication in Cromite of what hostile sites are doing

yes, I'm thinking about it. I lack the resources, because I can't do everything myself! but I'll get there.

the result is additional hours of work and research on my part every day having to run sites constantly through Blacklight or webkoll or, honestly, just switching to Fennec / Mull in the end because I can check instantly with uBlock.

let me get this straight, I would like to understand, i have never written adblock rules so i don't know the procedure. do you use android or desktop? Blacklight or webkoll what are they? what can you instantly understand with ublock panel? how do you know that the rule really works? I have seen many rules that hide but do not remove the script.

The solution to people shooting in the streets should not be that we all get armored vehicles to drive through them.

I can only tell you this. when I developed https://github.com/uazo/cromite/issues/251 (unfortunately without achieving the result I had expected), I realised that chromium was not giving me the one piece of information I found useful, namely, which script generated that tag? that is, I am able to make that information available via the developer tools: that tag was inserted by that script. do you think it might be useful?

which should be the number one priority.

no, I'm sorry, I have no priorities at the moment, but I do what I enjoy most. I am now focused on tests, for example.

[Nahanokino]

please think about providing some indication in Cromite of what hostile sites are doing

yes, I'm thinking about it. I lack the resources, because I can't do everything myself! but I'll get there.

the result is additional hours of work and research on my part every day having to run sites constantly through Blacklight or webkoll or, honestly, just switching to Fennec / Mull in the end because I can check instantly with uBlock.

let me get this straight, I would like to understand, i have never written adblock rules so i don't know the procedure. do you use android or desktop? Blacklight or webkoll what are they? what can you instantly understand with ublock panel? how do you know that the rule really works? I have seen many rules that hide but do not remove the script.

The solution to people shooting in the streets should not be that we all get armored vehicles to drive through them.

I can only tell you this. when I developed #251 (unfortunately without achieving the result I had expected), I realised that chromium was not giving me the one piece of information I found useful, namely, which script generated that tag? that is, I am able to make that information available via the developer tools: that tag was inserted by that script. do you think it might be useful?

which should be the number one priority.

no, I'm sorry, I have no priorities at the moment, but I do what I enjoy most. I am now focused on tests, for example.

Oh no, I don't mean to say it is the number one priority for you or that I feel entitled to tell you what to do. Apologies. It should be the number one priority for everyone.

As I mentioned, the objective should be to stay away from sites that actively try to harm visitors, so the visitors should not think "hey, I don't care, uBlock / Cromite / Brave / whatever protects me" but instead "holy crap, this site is really trying to get me, thank goodness uBlock / Cromite / Brave / whatever" is clearly TELLING me.

I use all browsers for work on several OSes and there are developer tools and uBlock available for most, but as I mentioned Fennec, the cleaned-up build of Firefox at F-Droid, and Mull, the cleaned-up and hardened version of Firefox by DivestOS, I thought it was clear I was specifically referring here to Android.

• https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid • https://f-droid.org/en/packages/us.spotco.fennec_dos

I also posted Android screenshots in my previous comment, of Blacklight and uBlock's dashboard. Blacklight and Webbkoll are services that analyze sites :

• https://themarkup.org/blacklight • https://webbkoll.dataskydd.net

There's no need of getting into specifics of rules or setups ( I have very strict settings but that's neither here nor there ) but let's see a very simple example of what I was talking about.

Ars Technica was a great tech news site 20 years ago. Today is an awful site ridiculously infested with trackers, vast amounts of cookies, malvertising, data mining, keyloggers, and all kinds of shenanigans actively and seriously trying to get anyone visiting. I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole or get anywhere near it.

If someone doesn't know all this and receives a link, then goes to Ars Technica, on Cromite there's no indication this site is doing all this. None. So they might think it is a perfectly fine site, and visit again and again, each time exposing themselves to harm, and maybe making it worse by sharing and promoting things from this site attracting even more victims.

If someone visits Ars Technica with any Firefox or Firefox-based browser with uBlock, it takes a fraction of a second to look at uBlock, not even opening the dashboard to see the details of trackers, cookies, third party crap, et al., but simply just seeing the little number indicating how many things uBlock is blocking, to know that this is a site one has to stay away from and never visit again.

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If for work or other reasons one has to, one can go deeper into analyzing the details of what's going on but that's another conversation.

"Is X or Y site fine or is it trying to harm me ?" -- There's no quick, immediate way to know with Cromite. There's no way to know, at all. Well, maybe disabling all protective options in Cromite, reloading, and seeing what happens -- doesn't seem like a great idea. That's all I was talking about.

[uazo]

is clearly TELLING me.

in my opinion we see it from different points of view. for me, adblock is an 'ad' 'blocker', i don't see the ads, it works. i see them, something's wrong. what? I use the right tools to figure it out. What I was telling you is that I can make you understand which script inserts an element, but perhaps I have not understood your objective.

Cromite there's no indication this site is doing all this

I know, I would like the user to know (but also read it as I would like to know) what the browser storage is, what frames are open, how they dialogue, what host they contact, what api they are using, what permissions they have active. all information obtainable but scattered. not a useless counter, great for marketing, technically useless. i understand your position, but, as many people tell me, i think differently. then, if someone offers me a patch that exposes that value, i don't see why i shouldn't include it. i simply won't do it.

Is X or Y site fine or is it trying to harm me ?

again, maybe we see it from a different point of view. for cromite (but this is the case for all the browsers mentioned) all sites are malicious and therefore an attempt is made by default to block all possibilities for the browser to turn a site into a really malicious site. Then it depends on how they do it, and here we get technical.

If for work or other reasons one has to, one can go deeper into analyzing the details of what's going on but that's another conversation.

Sorry but that's what I really wanted.

Blacklight and uBlock's dashboard. Blacklight and Webbkoll are services that analyze sites :

thank you, I will look at them, I did not know them.

[Striker789]

@uazo do anti-circumvention snippets prevent the loading of the ad, or does it simply hide it? Effectively speaking, does it prevent the ad from getting executed on the browser? I saw a an issue above regarding malvertising which has a significant point. In the eyeo link It states that Injected JavaScript snippets are inserted into a page and interrupt, modify, terminate, or otherwise change the behavior of other JavaScript functions. Therefore, does it terminate the ad from running on the browser, or cosmetically filter it?

[uazo]

Effectively speaking, does it prevent the ad from getting executed on the browser?

not necessarily. it basically allows the use of particular javascript functions called snippets. this is the code: https://github.com/uazo/cromite/blob/master/build/patches/Eyeo-Adblock-for-Cromite.patch#L5662

however, not all snippets are permitted in cromite: https://github.com/uazo/cromite/blob/master/build/patches/Eyeo-Adblock-for-Cromite.patch#L4504-L4553