20 Comments
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richardstevenhack's avatar

You do know that uBlock Origin no longer works on Chrome, right? uBlock Origin Lite still does, however.

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Jason Rowe's avatar

Yes I forgot to add that distinction in there. Although this is not specifically for Chrome. Thank you for pointing that out though.

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Pam's avatar

The ublock extension appears not to have an extension for Firefox IOS. What other solutions do you recommend?

Thanks, New Subscriber

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Jason Rowe's avatar

Yea that’s due to iOS it does not allow extensions. I would suggest switching to Brave for iOS. I love it. All the blocking is done through the browser so no extensions needed. If you need to stick with iOS then another option would be to use nextDNS and this can block ads and trackers at the network level. Easiest route is going with Brave browser. Hope that helps!

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duke68's avatar

Was wondering your opinion on Ghostery and Privacy Badger…

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Jason Rowe's avatar

They are effective tools I mention privacy badgering this post…

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Willie Brooks's avatar

Is it redundant to be using the Brave browser along with uBlock?

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Jason Rowe's avatar

My opinion is no with 1 caveat. The good is UBlock can give you tighter more customized blocking above and beyond Brave itself. However you may notice it is so strong some pages don’t work properly so in that case you can toggle it off temporarily while on the affected page.

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Willie Brooks's avatar

Thank you! Great insight.

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TCDP's avatar

After making your recommended settings above, do you still consider Safari privacy “Fair”? Thanks for sharing how we can all increase our privacy in whatever ecosystem we use. 🙏

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Jason Rowe's avatar

Yes in my opinion there are better options as I listed in the article

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TCDP's avatar

Your Safari instructions are incorrect - should be:

Go to SAFARI BROWSER SETTINGS > PRIVACY

Enable Prevent Cross-Site Tracking

Turn on Hide IP Address > From Trackers and Websites

Block all cookies by default (or use "Allow from websites I visit" for balance)

Under Advanced set Advanced Tracking and Fingerprinting protection to All Browsing

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Jason Rowe's avatar

Nope if you have updated to iOS 18 (like you should) as I have written it is correct. You go to settings then find safari and within safari there is a section called Privacy and security where each of these settings is located

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TCDP's avatar

Sorry, my reference was for Safari browser on MacOS - I should have clarified. I did not realize that your post only applied to Safari on iOS.

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Digital-Mark's avatar

Disabling third party apps and cookies are a must. Excellent article.

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Janie Starr's avatar

I'm on my macbook air and I use firefox as my browser, brave as my search engine. I went to https://ublockorigin.com/ to download ublock, and google showed up as my download engine. I do NOT want to use google for anything unless I have to. the other option was to click on source code instead. I don't know what that is, so thought I'd best check before proceeding. Thanks!

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Jason Rowe's avatar

So since it’s an extension you can add it directly to your browser. Head here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin/

Then click add to Firefox. It will ask for access, confirm and it will be added to your extensions. You will know it’s on when you see the red shield in the top corner of your browser.

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Janie Starr's avatar

Thank you! Easy peasy. Ironically perhaps, I know ublock is working because it initially prevented me from opening this site 😜 Am I correct in assuming I no longer need Adblock + ?

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T. Wu's avatar

Thanks. I’m using Vivaldi now and it seems I’m able to blaze past ads on YouTube. Speaking of which: is it possible it’s listening to my phone? Sorry if this comes up a lot.

Once I was in a store with my sister and we picked up and looked at a pocket knife. Later that day I saw a clip of that same style knife. This is a store we didn’t look up online, did not search for this or any other knife (it’s a Japanese tool shop and carries lots of knives). We didn’t take any photos. Didn’t use my phone at all while in the store. Just in my pocket.

Another example. On a Signal group chat with friends (none of them ahem govt officials) we talked about frailty among the elderly, and later I see a clip on fall protection on my YouTube feed.

Is this by design?

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BornAlive's avatar

thanks for this!!. now i gotta find a young bro who can make it happen in my tech.

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