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> Blocking third-party requests
Christian J
post Nov 9 2021, 02:26 PM
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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/
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Christian J
post Nov 9 2021, 07:00 PM
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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."
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Christian J
post Nov 10 2021, 12:39 PM
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Acrylic uses Google DNS by default. Is that good from a privacy perspective, considering Google is my main adversary? ninja.gif

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?
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pandy
post Nov 10 2021, 04:55 PM
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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.
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Christian J
post Nov 10 2021, 05:52 PM
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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. wacko.gif

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pandy
post Nov 10 2021, 06:20 PM
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My brain blocks 99% of it for me. cool.gif
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Christian J
post Nov 10 2021, 08:02 PM
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Advertising is a violation of my human rights. cool.gif

Turns out Tor Project has pulled version 11 from their download page, so I reinstalled the previous release.
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Christian J
post Nov 17 2021, 03:56 PM
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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?).
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