Minigame: Celebrate Firefox 70's release by finding a website with 70+ trackers blocked

Firefox turned 70 today, at least in terms of version, with an update focused on – surprise, surprise – security and privacy. In an attempt to hammer home just how much Mozilla is looking after users, the company has added a Privacy Protections Report to illustrate how slurpy some parts of the world wide web can be. The …

[Anonymous Coward]

No, we aren't going to name names. Glass houses and all that.

"There was also a certain joy to be had in seeing just how high we could get those tracker numbers just by visiting some day-to-day sites."

C'mon, let's name some sites!

I use the Daily Fail to test the defences of my Pi-Hole.

[N2]

Re: No, we aren't going to name names. Glass houses and all that.

Beat me to it, dailyfail is a real rats nest o shyte

[John McCallum]

Re: No, we aren't going to name names. Glass houses and all that.

No surprise there the Dailyfail has been cesspool since before WW1

[katrinab]

Re: No, we aren't going to name names. Glass houses and all that.

The Independent is worse if you are considering only the additional garbage that gets added on to every page. U-Block Origin regularly reports that it is blocking 1000+ items.

[I ain't Spartacus]

Re: No, we aren't going to name names. Glass houses and all that.

The Independent have consistently used some of the most unreadable and horrible looking fonts I've ever seen on a professional site. I've never understood why.

[Claverhouse]

Re: No, we aren't going to name names. Glass houses and all that.

Well, The Independent's not got a reputation for being very bright. Woke, but not bright.

[ThadiasVonBasterd]

Re: No, we aren't going to name names. Glass houses and all that.

While browsing the Register i am blocking trackers from admedo.com, cheqzone.com, doubleclick.net, google-analytics.com, gstatic.com, outbrain.com and scorecardresearch.com

Glass houses indeed.

[vir]

weather.com used to have an infinite scroll of sponsored content. Why anyone would continue to scroll once they hit it is beyond me; I used to keep going just to see how many adblock notifications I could get - triple digits one time.

[jake]

IBM's weather.com is dreadful. I stopped using it, and use NOAA instead ...

If you want to see a bunch of ads, check out the online equestrian world.

[Anonymous Coward]

"check out the online equestrian world"

I always wondered what "network neigh-bourhood" was for...

[GnuTzu]

I dread the day that direct access by taxpayers to the national weather service is taken away so that such 'fine' content will be mandatory. Time to write a representative.

[Qumefox]

That day my come sooner than later. The oompa loompa in chief has been trying to get some accuweather exec appointed to be the head of the NWS for a couple of years now.

And for anyone outside the USA who doesn't know. Accuweather is a company who's business model is monetizing the public data the NWS provides. They also tried to get legislation approved a decade or so ago trying to block the NWS from making it's website more user friendly, and have tried several times to stop the NWS from releasing data publicly at all.

[Claverhouse]

Hmm, interesting.

I vaguely remember another instance of a private company trying to stop the US government from publishing data so as to have their own monopoly, but a goog search reveals nothing.

Still, very suggestive. Thanks.

[JohnFen]

"I stopped using it, and use NOAA instead"

I never used weather.com, but I used to use wunderground.com, until I learned of the horrific marketing practices. Then I switched to NOAA as well.

I wish that I had done so much earlier, because the NOAA site is much better!

[JohnFen]

Happy release day, Firefox!

While I stopped using the post-quantum releases (because I simply don't like it post-revamp), I do wish Firefox great success!

[N2]

telegraph.co.uk

Front page:

12 scripts

6 ads

5 trackers

5 site analytics - yeah right

couldnt be arsed to count the cookies, dozens of the bloody things - all hosed.

Not quite as bad as the fail but still pretty abysmal

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: telegraph.co.uk

And then there are the scripts that are hidden by being blocked by the first level scripts and another below that.

The plug-in NoScript will demonstrate this feature.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: telegraph.co.uk

I deleted BuzzFeed from my books marks a couple of years ago, after finding the number of scripts and trackers ran to three pages; 70 would be a very conservative estimate.

[beast666]

Re: telegraph.co.uk

BuzzFeed...

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: telegraph.co.uk

Yep - BF FTW! Hold page down for a while and watch your ad blocker do its job.

[Lorribot]

Sing like a canary

Used to like Firefox up to around mid 50s but it started going slower and slower. Wouldn't touch Chrome with a barge pole as Google are responsible for all the trash on the web, however Edge Canary (nightly build with chromium engine) is rather pleasant, quick and stable and you can use the Chrome store for good and ill. Strange to think I trust MS more than Google but that is where Google have ended up.

Also use uBlock Origin plugin and allow certain sites i want to support like the Register

[Danny 2]

Re: Sing like a canary

"Used to like Firefox up to around mid 50s but it started going slower and slower."

Don't we all at that age?

I stuck with Adblock Plus *because* it allows some adverts through if they meet certain criteria (and pay them). You're never going to stop the advertising industry short of a revolution, and you just get blocked by more and more sites. AdB+ educates and disciplines advertisers. Do you remember how awful and evil web ads were 15 years ago? I can't guess how many epileptic fits they caused.

[Oh, and thanks for the reminder, I am just unblocking El Reg and it's 3 adverts.]

[JohnFen]

Re: Sing like a canary

"Do you remember how awful and evil web ads were 15 years ago?"

I do, but at least they didn't spy on us. I'd take those ads over the constant assault that the advertising world inflicts on us now any day of the week.

[CBM]

Re: Sing like a canary

Firefox switched to a much faster/more efficient rendering engine with version 60 (but the changes around that time also broke many old plugins and changed UI so many people reluctant to shift).

[phuzz]

Re: Sing like a canary

Current Firefox and Chrome both render fast enough that I can't tell the difference between them, (assuming the network is up to it of course). I've found Chrome tends to use a bit more RAM than Firefox.

There's a few sites which will only work in Chrome (fuck you Natwest online banking), but I've used Firefox since it was Phoenix so I'm not likely to give up now.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sing like a canary

NATWEST business online banking works with firefox.

I did have to enable cookies

I rarely use chrome.

[phuzz]

Re: Sing like a canary

Ah, it might have been having a bit of a lie-down when I last tried a few months ago. I'll try again soon.

[Crazy Operations Guy]

Re: Sing like a canary

The performance issues seem to lie in Firefox's rendering / add-on pipeline, so cleaning up pages before they even make it into Firefox's pipeline will make it perform much better. I've been running Privoxy to do exactly that on the network level. ABP, uBlock, and NoScript will run much better as well since they won't be bogged down with crap either. Other proxies will work, I just prefer Privoxy for its simplicity and ability to import ABP's block lists without too much difficulty.

I also prefer the network proxy solution since I can provide ad-blocking on all my devices without the devices needing to support add-ons.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Murky News

www.mercurynews.com will hit 100+ in ABP if you only block the leaf trackers. Block the root trackers and it's still 30+. If you block enough of the web bugs, the blocker blocker asking for money goes away too. Load it without protection and you'll see nothing but ads and JavaScript malware. I'm not sure how you're supposed to buy a subscription because I've only seen malware on the purchase page.

[jake]

Re: Murky News

The San Jose Mercury News is still in business? Who knew? I haven't even heard the name mentioned in passing in well over a decade, and I'm just across the Bay from them!

[Danny Boyd]

Doesn't "how much Mozilla is looking after users" sound somewhat ambiguous?

[Anonymous Coward]

Phorm

At least I think it was called that.

Does anyone else remember the fuss about its use? IIRC they pretty much had to stop using it anywhere except Brazil.

God, they were (the developers) total innocents compared to what we have to put up with now.

I mean, with all the data that they must have on me you would think the adverts that I get would at least be relevant wouldn't you. Still, it's their money that they are wasting so I at least have that satisfaction.

Cheers… Ishy

[chivo243]

I remember when

a browser was just another app. Now we have entered into BaaOS. Damn adverts anyway. I block as many as possible, at least until the websites can guarantee that the advert payload is pristine clean, so I guess I'll be blocking until they pry the Pi-Hole out of my cold dead hypervisor. Don't get me started about paying for the bandwidth ads chew through.

[Ozan]

Firefox

Good to see new release of Firefox. I never used anything on my home machines for a long time now. I never liked chrome. When it was fast, it felt missing pieces and now it does not feel fast at all.

Work machine does not have Firefox so I use Edge at work. Feels much better than chrome.

I am more curious about lockwise. I used last pass for a long time and I am quite happy with it, though.

[jason 7]

Look the Eastern Evening news

How people look at that without blocking etc. I have no idea. Not that the journalism is anything to write home about. Strictly work experience level.

[Claverhouse]

new secure passwords ("rather than the typical 123456", which, astonishingly continued to top the charts in 2018, ahead of old favourite "password")

Think, people, use your heads: try lateral thinking.

654321 is where it's at.