Re: [Tails-dev] [review'n'merge:1.3] feature/8665-remove-adb…

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Author: matsa
Date:  
To: tails-dev
Subject: Re: [Tails-dev] [review'n'merge:1.3] feature/8665-remove-adblock [Was: AdBlock Plus in Tails' Tor Browser]

Hi all,

intrigeri <intrigeri@???> a écrit :

> Hi,
>
> intrigeri wrote (10 Jan 2015 09:30:42 GMT) :
> > intrigeri wrote (31 Oct 2014 17:13:36 GMT) :
> >> anonym wrote (23 Oct 2014 12:42:02 GMT) :
> >> Now, I'm not opposed to trying it out: let's remove AdBlock in our
> >> next major release, and see what users say. It might be that the
> >> next step is to re-add it immediately until we have persistence
> >> for add-ons and their configuration, but it might also be the case
> >> that very few people complain.
>
> > I've seen no objection to this proposal, so I'll try to tackle this
> > for Tails 1.3 (#8665) and we'll see. Anyone interested, feel free to
> > steal that ticket from me, as my plate for 1.3 is already full
> > enough.
>
> Done, please review'n'merge for 1.3. See details about the testing
> I've done on the ticket.
>
> Cheers!


The idea is to remove AdBlock from Tails, right?

I also beg to disagree, a few quotes of objections raised on this list:

anonym <anonym@???> Thu, 23 Oct 2014 :

> I added AdBlock to Incognito's browser primarily for performance
> reasons
> [...]
> As for tracking avoidance, I guess the basic issue is that if
> I (more or less) concurrently browse sites X and Y, and both serve
> ads from Z, then Z can correlate my presence on X and Y in various
> ways. The Tor Browser does stuff to prevent this, like disabling 3rd
> party cookies and probably more things I'm unaware of, but I suppose
> the ad fetches still may use the same Tor circuit, so AdBlock:ing
> seems to at least help with preventing that.


[...]

> > For me personally, however, the biggest benefit with AdBlock Plus is
> > that I can enjoy my browsing experience as ad-free. This may not be
> > a good argument for its inclusion, though, just a personal
> > anecdote. :)
>
> Same here.


Same here. Usuability is part of Tails' design, did you recently tried
to browse mainstream websites without AdBlock?

BitingBird <bitingbird@???> Sat, 01 Nov 2014:

> I think a good number of them are going to manually install and
> persist adblock, which will be worse than having it by default
> for everybody


+1 Excellent point.

Moreover, I believe that there are now enough Tails users to ensure a
(quite) good anonymity set.
If the idea is to get a network fingerprint closer to "TorBrowser
outside of Tails", why don't we push things to get it integrated in
Torbrowser, i.e. upstream?

There is room for commentary about the design documentation[1], and
there are still open tickets there[2]

[1] https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/#philosophy
[2] https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/5967
    https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/ticket/10914


Cheers