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HTMLHelp Forums _ Off Topic _ Blocking third-party requests

Posted by: Christian J Nov 9 2021, 02:26 PM

Any suggestions on how to block third-party requests today (especially in Tor browser)?

I've used extensions like uMatrix for a long time, but now both that and uBlock Origin stopped working in Tor version 11. Strangely, when I tried the Brave browser's Tor function, uMatrix stopped working there too (not right away, but after a little while); which is odd since (unlike Tor Browser) Brave is Chromium-based (can it still be a Tor bug due to say embedded Tor network code?). The uMatrix extension itself has not been updated since summer.

I also use a blacklist in the Windows hosts file, but apparently Tor browser ignores the hosts file by design (at least in Windows).

Some have suggested using Pi-hole in a Raspberry Pi, any experience? I suppose that could be used as a last resort. https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/pi-hole-raspberry-pi/

Posted by: Christian J Nov 9 2021, 07:00 PM

Another option might be Acrylic DNS Proxy: https://sourceforge.net/projects/acrylic/

"Acrylic is a local DNS proxy for Windows which improves the performance of your computer by caching the responses coming from your DNS servers and helps you fight unwanted ads through the use of a custom HOSTS file (optimized for handling hundreds of thousands of domain names) with support for wildcards and regular expressions."

Posted by: Christian J Nov 10 2021, 12:39 PM

Acrylic uses Google DNS by default. Is that good from a privacy perspective, considering Google is my main adversary?

Alas Tor browser bypasses Acrylic, and I couldn't make it work in Tor despite following instructions for Tor here:
https://mayakron.altervista.org/support/acrylic/FAQ.htm (normal browsers did work):

QUOTE

You should start by adding the following line to your "torrc" file, which enables the TOR's builtin DNS resolver:

CODE

DNSPort 127.0.0.1:40

Then Acrylic must be configured to use TOR's builtin DNS resolver, like in the example shown below:

CODE

PrimaryServerAddress=127.0.0.1
PrimaryServerPort=40
PrimaryServerProtocol=UDP
PrimaryServerQueryTypeAffinityMask=A;AAAA;PTR

For troubleshooting, is there any way to check which DNS resolver a browser has used?

Posted by: pandy Nov 10 2021, 04:55 PM

Don't look at me. I know nothing about the software you mention. Well, Tor, but I only use it occasionally.

I don't know if DNS servers log requests. Those logs would be HUGE.

Posted by: Christian J Nov 10 2021, 05:52 PM

QUOTE(pandy @ Nov 10 2021, 10:55 PM)

Don't look at me. I know nothing about the software you mention. Well, Tor, but I only use it occasionally.

Seems there are several extension-related bugs in Tor 11: https://blog.torproject.org/new-release-tor-browser-11-0

An alternative to Tor might be an ordinary browser with a VPN and a third-party blocker, but I'm a bit wary of VPN operators.

QUOTE

I don't know if DNS servers log requests. Those logs would be HUGE.

Not huger than all the data Google Analytics collect, or? It would be interesting to know how long each anonymous user profile is retained (if the profile can be tied to a human I assume they keep it forever).

The web really is unbearable without adblocking.

Posted by: pandy Nov 10 2021, 06:20 PM

My brain blocks 99% of it for me.

Posted by: Christian J Nov 10 2021, 08:02 PM

Advertising is a violation of my human rights.

Turns out Tor Project has pulled version 11 from their download page, so I reinstalled the previous release.

Posted by: Christian J Nov 17 2021, 03:56 PM

I reverted to 10.5.10, but then its default setting made it download version 11.0.1. This time the extensions worked until today. Very strange, why break after several days?

Then I had to revert to 10.5.10 again, quickly go into Settings and disable automatic updates before version 11 was downloaded a third time. I only had seconds to do this (unless the installation can be halted as long as you haven't restarted Tor browser?).