Trackers and Ads

[kb_mv]

I switched to using Brave browser 2 days ago. I was using Opera and Adguard previously. After 2 days of use, 4400 trackers and ads blocked and 241 MB of bandwidth saved (on my desktop). Crazy!

[kb_mv]

Regardless of how a particular browser or extension counts trackers and ads, the totals are staggering. Your online life is monetized should you take no steps to limit the exposure. I am averaging 2200 ads / trackers a day blocked and I am not a particularly heavy user. Ever since I stumbled upon Brian Kreb's site, I have become way more conscious and serious about my digital foot print and cyber security. If nothing else it gives me something to do other than social media lol.

[Korth]

I used to prefer the hosts approach, as well.

https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

But I found that very large, very comprehensive hosts files ate a lot of memory and had a noticeable impact on performance. A fraction of a second here, another fraction there, half a second or so at each browser instance startup, each new browser tab, etc. It all adds up, even on fast machinery, worse on slow machinery.

So I went with Pi-hole. Though, again, there's still a performance hit. Not as bad but still there.

I finally went with dedicated hardware running Pi-hole. This is the winner, no contest. The flipside is more technical setup and maintenance. But it's really not that hard and there's plenty of guides for those interested. (Just make sure you choose decent hardware which won't bottleneck network throughput, I went with an ASUS Tinkerboard, probably overkill.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi-Hole

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/pi-hole-raspberry-pi/

The downside is that none of these approaches works on a mobile device using mobile data. They're fine if you connect across WiFi through your own network, they're useless if you're connecting across cellular data anywhere else.

Brave has been the best solution I've found for mobile data so far. Always hoping there might be something even better.

[will13am]

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@Anonymous wrote:

I use Firefox for most of my browsing on desktop and mobile. The add-ons are a little more limited on mobile unfortunately.

I use HTTPS Everywhere, Adblocker Ultimate, Smart Referer and Noscript.

Firefox has a few built-in things too. I block third-party cookies. I selectively allow some cookies otherwise blocking others.

I use Thunderbird for my email client. I don't download images in emails. Remember, an image can be just 1 pixel that you can't see. It's tracked.

I then use W10 Edge as my open browser on desktop for sites that don't like all these things in the way and I just can't be bothered to figure out what all they want.

I use Chrome a little on desktop. It's my open browser on mobile.

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You are a thunderbird user as well!  I still use Seamonkey from time to time.  Netscape Communicator lives on.  I digress.  The built in mail client is pretty much thunderbird.  

For ad-blocking, I inject a hosts file into my router.  Nobody on the network has access the dubious sites.  This allows users to choose their favorite browser and still get the same protection.  This arrangement has served me well over the years.  

[Korth]

I like Brave. It's pretty good for desktop/laptop browsing and it seems unbeatable for mobile browsing. The click-on-lionface icon which lets you quickly enable/disable all or some of the blocking is handy when confronted by websites which stubbornly refuse to deal with anonymous privacy-conscious strangers.

Less obvious is the "Brave Ad Block" submenu within the "Customize and control Brave" control panel. You can enable/disable on a per-category or per-item basis, you can add custom filters. For example, adding the custom filter ##.ytp-ce-element is enough to completely block all ads, banners, and overlays on YouTube.

Even less obvious is the "Block element" option when you "View page source". Hover the mouse over the element you (don't) want or over its chunk of sourcecode, then right-click or hold-click and "Block this element" on the menu. Public Mobile's Simon chatbot met this fate on my mobile Brave, his rudely immovable position onscreen made typing with the touchscreen keyboard too much of a frustrating experience.

The built-in TOR isn't bad, but it seems slower than most others. There is no built-in VPN, although that's not really a bad thing since the ones which are included in other browsers (like Opera) tend to be completely gutless and ineffective where they matter the most anyhow. If you "Save As..." html pages to local drive then the files will only be compatible with other chromium-based browsers - non-chromium browsers (notably Mozilla, Firefox, Edge) will often mangle the coding, parse and display everything wrong, although the address link itself always remains intact.

All that being said ... I think Brave tends to brag and inflate its success rate in the homepage stats. A lot of false positive or utterly harmless and trivial objects included to pump up that impressive score. I find that all privacy/security softwares behave this way, they're designed to show off as much as possible so that end-users will have confidence in the brand and the product.

Still, all those blocked objects - things your browser simply does not load when fetching webpages - do reduce the amount of data you consume. Fewer of your few GB of mobile data will be wasted on unsolicited and annoying junk you never wanted in the first place.

[Anonymous]

I use Firefox for most of my browsing on desktop and mobile. The add-ons are a little more limited on mobile unfortunately.

I use HTTPS Everywhere, Adblocker Ultimate, Smart Referer and Noscript.

Firefox has a few built-in things too. I block third-party cookies. I selectively allow some cookies otherwise blocking others.

I use Thunderbird for my email client. I don't download images in emails. Remember, an image can be just 1 pixel that you can't see. It's tracked.

I then use W10 Edge as my open browser on desktop for sites that don't like all these things in the way and I just can't be bothered to figure out what all they want.

I use Chrome a little on desktop. It's my open browser on mobile.