[HN Gopher] "I don't care about cookies" web extension acquired ...
___________________________________________________________________
"I don't care about cookies" web extension acquired by Avast
Author : SamuelAdams
Score : 218 points
Date : 2022-09-15 12:32 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu)
| technothrasher wrote:
| My web browsing just got interrupted by a new tab that opened
| without asking me, informing me of this acquisition. I have a
| 'one strike' rule for abusive behavior in extensions, and
| immediately removed it.
| rjh29 wrote:
| It's like with phone apps. Every single phone app thinks it is
| the centre of the universe and is "only" sending you a few
| notifications per day, but if you extend this to every app on
| your phone you'll get hundreds a day and the only recourse is
| to disable them entirely.
| Fatnino wrote:
| Worst of all, the actual phone call app.
|
| Why much I jump through countless hoops just to make it so a
| third party doesn't have the ability to take over the full
| screen and audio of the device I was actively using?
|
| Ideally an incoming call would only vibrate the device
| briefly and put an icon in the status bar. That's it.
| Instead, I don't remember what I did anymore but it's
| completely suppressed on my device now. It's actually worked
| out OK because I don't give my number to anyone new and
| anyone who does know it also knows by now that I don't pick
| up and to contact me some other way. Means that ~100% of
| incoming calls are spam and my device is correctly filtering
| them all to /dev/null
| Swizec wrote:
| Teachers: "My students are smart and diligent, 30min of
| homework per day should be well within their abilities"
|
| Students: _have 4 hours of homework per day_
|
| The latest app that needs their notifications disabled on my
| phone is Amazon. Shame really, knowing about packages was
| useful. But I really don't need spam about "Hey this thing
| you glanced at is on sale now" every 2 days.
| joshmanders wrote:
| DoorDash is terrible at this too. Notice that when you turn
| notifications off on these apps then every time you open
| them to use them, you get popups "please enable
| notifications to keep up to date on your orders!!" and the
| options are always "Yes enable notifications!" or "Remind
| me later" Excuse me, I disabled notifications for a reason,
| don't make me disable usage of your app completely.
| Swizec wrote:
| Oh yeah UberEats was one of the first notification
| permissions to go. Sorry I'd rather check my phone every
| 2 minutes when awaiting delivery than deal with you on
| the other 95% of days.
| autoexec wrote:
| Why not disable all notifications by default? Is there
| something you actually really _want_ to get interrupted
| by? I want to know when I get a call or an text, but
| pretty much everything else can wait until I 'm actively
| engaged with it.
|
| Every new app I installed gets every permission I can
| disable disabled including notifications and if it
| continues to function well enough for my needs why let it
| do anything more? Why even give new apps opportunity to
| be obnoxious?
| Swizec wrote:
| I keep my phone in do not disturb at all times. Have done
| so for 10 years at least.
|
| These days I no longer give notification permissions to
| apps. But I used to. So I go back and remove when
| someone's being a problem.
| aendruk wrote:
| These apps are dead to me. Life is short and it feels
| unjust to dignify these games with any attention beyond
| swift deletion.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _Every single phone app thinks it is the centre of the
| universe and is "only" sending you a few notifications per
| day, but if you extend this to every app on your phone you'll
| get hundreds a day and the only recourse is to disable them
| entirely._
|
| Is there a general name for this sort of bias? It's not just
| phone apps and notifications; I notice this center of the
| universe attitude in developers of all kinds of auxiliary
| programs. Chat app programmers who think that quip "unused
| ram is wasted ram", which they learned in the context of the
| OS caching files in ram, gives their chat app license to use
| as much ram as the user may have. It ignores all the other
| programs the user is probably running that are much more
| important than their chat app. To the chat app developer, the
| chat app is the center of the universe and the user has no
| use for any of their ram besides running the chat app.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Is there a general name for this sort of bias?
|
| selfishness?
| dylan604 wrote:
| That sounds like somethign that should happen on new window
| launch or after a relaunch of app kind of thing. For the
| browser to just randomly open a tab is very uncool
| TheJoeMan wrote:
| Then there is someone nearly the same who cries foul when they
| aren't told a new company owns the extension. What if Google
| bought it and was going to harvest that "ability to read and
| change website data" permission?
| ls15 wrote:
| It should tell you before you install or update the
| extension, not randomly when they decide that now is the best
| time.
| andrewstuart2 wrote:
| I'm assuming that an extension update is precisely what
| triggered this behavior. It sounds like the extension had
| no need for alert functionality, and that this was a first
| occurrence, so I'd also assume they had to add code to
| trigger an alert rather than just blasting a brand new
| alert to users via written but previously-unused code.
| mh- wrote:
| I'm fairly sure the Chrome Extension API doesn't have a way
| to implement "before self-updating, do this thing".
|
| This might have been their best/only option. The only other
| approach would be to notify them post-update.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Yeah, I dislike the intrusive nature of the notification, but
| I can't really think of a better way off the top of my head.
| The notification API could work in theory, but if you don't
| already have that permission it would be odd to request it
| just for a one-time message like this.
| Flimm wrote:
| This is the polar opposite of abusive behaviour.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| I think the "stealing of focus" is what the commenter took
| issue with.
|
| Many people complain about OSes and apps for that matter,
| stealing focus inappropriately.
| ouid wrote:
| Yesterday discord asked me, upon install, for permission to
| capture keystrokes when it is not in focus.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| Part of that is handling the Discord overlay. So, when you
| are in a game, and you are in a Discord VC, you can display
| who is talking. There are keyboard shortcuts that come along
| with that which you can use if you want.
|
| In order to detect those keyboard short cuts, they need to
| listen for them.
|
| You are free to not give them permission.
|
| Posting about asking permission under a comment talking about
| "abusive" behavior is a bit odd.
| ouid wrote:
| Opening a new tab telling you about changes in the
| ownership of a piece of software that _has the ability to
| open tabs autonomously_ is not abusive. Moreover it is not
| even a problem with the extension, it is a problem with the
| opersting system it runs on.
|
| Analogously, i am sure that discord would have preferred to
| have finer control over the permissions it requests, but
| Apple's mission is security theater. If apple exposed a set
| of "application specific out of focus keybinds". The
| security breach would not be necessary.
|
| As it stands lots of software in the apple ecosystem has
| identical permissions to discord, but those don't get scary
| warnings associated to them. This constitutes a (clearly
| illegal) competitive advantage for Apple and they have no
| interest in removing this advantage by offering finer
| permissions controls, even in the case where they do not
| offer competing software.
| gibspaulding wrote:
| Do you have push-to-talk enabled, or a keybind for toggle-
| mute? That's a super abusable permission and this isn't to
| say they aren't abusing it, but there is a reason for it to
| exist.
| andrepd wrote:
| What an odd complaint. The annoyance of 1 pop-up is negligible
| compared to the extreme usefulness of letting me know that the
| extension was acquired. _That_ is what makes me uninstall the
| extension.
| crooked-v wrote:
| In my experience this is fairly common for "what's changed"
| listings for extensions. It's probably mostly to do with how
| browsers don't provide any good native mechanism for that.
| krageon wrote:
| Nobody cares what changed, and nobody should have to care.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| In most cases yes, but a change in ownership is definitely
| something I want to know about.
|
| I'd prefer a less intrusive way of notifying me of the
| change, but in this case the extension in question is one
| that works passively in the background, and doesn't have a
| UI that users regularly interact with. I can't really think
| of a better way to inform people, except maybe via the
| notification API?
| ben_w wrote:
| Unless it's a security vulnerability, I quite often find
| that I would have preferred for the update to never been
| made in the first place.
| nneonneo wrote:
| I do care - I install tools because they're useful, and if
| they become more useful from new features, that's useful to
| know. I've definitely found some good gems to improve my
| workflow that I don't think I'd have discovered without the
| changelog.
|
| What I don't particularly care about is "performance
| optimizations and bug fixes". If that's all you have to say
| about your latest release, just don't bother telling me. I
| suspect that's where some of the fatigue from release notes
| comes from.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| I recently received a phone call from Dexcom, since they
| make a continuous glucose monitor that I wear. The call
| was to warn me not to upgrade to iOS 16 as their app
| would immediately crash and I wouldn't be able to view my
| blood sugar. I was told a fix was being deployed and I
| would receive an email when it was safe to upgrade.
|
| Sure enough, a week later I received an email saying it
| was safe to upgrade to iOS 16, provided I updated the app
| in the App Store first.
|
| And as frustrated as I was that a company that large with
| a product so safety critical had waited literally months
| after the iOS betas before testing iOS16, I was more
| frustrated when I read the release notes for this
| incredibly important update:
|
| "Bug fixes and performance optimizations"
| PaulHoule wrote:
| For good reason.
|
| It's a pretty safe bet you can throw any mail that has
| "IMPORTANT" printed on the envelope in the trash.
|
| Every online store, software vendor and web site wishes they
| could get my attention for an "IMPORTANT" message at least
| 100x more often than I wish they did.
| chucksmash wrote:
| Browser extensions already have access to privileged APIs
| that websites cannot use, however, so providing this
| ability to extensions !== providing it to medium.com.
|
| The kind of company that would abuse an extension API like
| this for marketing is just the kind of company I wouldn't
| trust for extensions, so even spammy marketing messages
| would still be a useful signal (to uninstall).
| Klaster_1 wrote:
| Sublime Text extensions do this too, quite annoying when you
| open an editor for for a quick note and several seconds in the
| typing focus switches to a new tab. Of course, browser
| extensions that do this are annoying too, especially when you
| get bombarded by new tabs if you didn't use the browser in a
| while. This is so user-hostile, how come the issue wasn't
| tackled by browser vendors yet?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _several seconds in the typing focus switches to a new tab_
|
| I've never understood why operating systems allow focus
| switching.
|
| It's always been a pox on Windows, but macOS does this more
| and more these days. Just this morning, I plugged in a USB
| hard drive, then returned to my other work while it mounted.
| Suddenly, I'm typing a memo into Finder's password field to
| unlock the drive. Just. Stop. It.
|
| If you need my attention, there is no shortage of methods to
| do that -- Beep. Bounce the icon in the dock. Notifications
| messages. Your stupid program is not more important than
| whatever I'm doing at that moment in time.
| vinaypai wrote:
| To name one use case off the top of my head. I use
| KeePassXC's autotype feature to fill in passwords all the
| time. That wouldn't work if it was prevented by the OS from
| switching focus.
| joshmanders wrote:
| > Suddenly, I'm typing a memo into Finder's password field
| to unlock the drive. Just. Stop. It.
|
| Normally I would lol at your misfortune but I actually got
| bitten by this too.
|
| I restarted after a macOS update (remember when they used
| to update in the background and now every one requires a
| restart like Windows?) and 1Password needed my master
| password to unlock in the browser but apparently Messages
| app took a few seconds to load and when I saw the
| notification to enter my 1Pass master password I started
| typing and at that moment Messages took focus and I typed
| my master password into a message and hit enter to send.
|
| Thankfully it was to my girlfriend, but still wtf.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Agree, but the flip side of this is that occasionally
| Windows will prompt for admin access in the background, I
| won't notice, and a hour later wonder what happened to that
| app i tried to install.
| reaperducer wrote:
| I'm not a regular Windows users, but I believe Windows
| has lots of other ways to get people's attention, other
| than stealing it. Isn't that what the icon tray is for?
| Or blinking the program in the task bar?
| Fatnino wrote:
| No, when windows pops the admin auth prompt into the
| background the best and most reliable way to notice is to
| intuit that such a window should have appeared by now and
| go looking for it.
| ridgered4 wrote:
| The worst is when the application activates itself but
| isn't actually done loading or ready for user input. It's
| like the spam call I received once that immediately asked
| me to hold for the next available operator when I picked up
| the phone.
| OrderlyTiamat wrote:
| microsoft teams is the worst for this. It'll be loading
| for 10s, during which it will actually steal focus
| _multiple times_! (and then I have to login to my
| university account in order to logOUT of my university
| account so that I can login to my work account. What a
| marvelous piece of engineering.)
| dotancohen wrote:
| > I've never understood why operating systems allow focus
| switching.
|
| KDE calls this "Focus stealing" and has a setting to
| disable it.
| petesergeant wrote:
| That's _exactly_ what I'd want to happen? Transfer of ownership
| of an extension that has access to my most intimate data, I
| want a klaxon to go off...
| pornel wrote:
| There's https://ninja-cookie.com/ alternative.
| Probable8618 wrote:
| omgmajk wrote:
| Time to deactivate. Shame.
| keepquestioning wrote:
| The Web is a shitshow
|
| What does Brave do about the cookie crap?
| rizoma_dev wrote:
| Does anyone have any alternative extensions to it?
| sttav wrote:
| What a shame. Uninstalled.
| awiesenhofer wrote:
| Damn, this sucks!
|
| Anyone know of a good alternative?
|
| (No, UBOs annoyance/cookie filters dont come close sadly...)
| no-reply wrote:
| I like how everyone is quick in stating the GPLv3 license and
| asking somebody to maintain it. I know I can't do that either but
| looking at everybody pointing fingers is funny.
| DavideNL wrote:
| Interesting to see the reviews... :
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-a...
| [deleted]
| parmezan wrote:
| Deinstalled. Very sad because this this extension made my life
| better. Any open source (FLOSS) alternative?
| severine wrote:
| Not exactly the same, but I'm happy so far with Consent-O-
| Matic:
|
| https://consentomatic.au.dk/
| grey_earthling wrote:
| > Although using dark patterns is illegal, the laws are not
| enforced enough, so many websites get away with it.
|
| The problem with consent pop-ups isn't the European law; it's
| the failure to properly enforce it.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| Definitely recommend this one. I have it switched to not
| consenting to anything, and I haven't seen a cookie popup
| since.
| o_m wrote:
| You can active filters in ublock origin that blocks cookie
| banners. I think the one I'm using is "Fanboy's Annoyance".
| dngray wrote:
| THIS. Which is why we don't recommend extensions on
| privacyguides.org besides uBO (uBlock Origin). If that ever
| gets bought, you'll hear about it everywhere and there will
| most likely be a fork.
|
| These days for privacy with Firefox you really don't need
| anything else. There are a _few_ others that _may_ have
| something to offer
| https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions for
| specific purposes.
| NobodyNada wrote:
| > If that ever gets bought, you'll hear about it everywhere
| and there will most likely be a fork.
|
| In fact, that already happened, and that's why it's called
| uBlock _Origin_ :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/uBlock_Origin
|
| > The uBlock project official repository was transferred to
| Chris Aljoudi by original developer Raymond Hill in April
| 2015, due to frustration of dealing with requests. However,
| Hill immediately self-forked it and continued the effort
| there. This version was later renamed uBlock Origin and it
| has been completely divorced from Aljoudi's uBlock. Aljoudi
| created ublock.org to host and promote uBlock and to
| request donations. In response, uBlock's founder Raymond
| Hill stated that "the donations sought by ublock.org are
| not benefiting any of those who contributed most to create
| uBlock Origin." The development of uBlock stopped in August
| 2015 and it has been sporadically updated since January
| 2017. In July 2018, ublock.org was acquired by AdBlock, and
| since February 2019, uBlock began allowing "Acceptable
| Ads", a program run by Adblock Plus that allows some ads
| which are deemed "acceptable", and for which the larger
| publishers pay a fee. uBlock Origin remains independent and
| does not allow ads for payment.
| awiesenhofer wrote:
| "IDCAC" doesnt have much to do with privacy, its about
| convenience. uBO filters dont help you there, as they cant
| click buttons for you on all the different cookie forms.
| NobodyNada wrote:
| If there's no buttons to worry about clicking (because
| uBO removed them), what does it matter? GDPR requires you
| to actively consent, so if you ignore the cookie banner
| (or block it) advertisers can't track you.
| Winmillion wrote:
| i've found a good few websites break when you don't
| interact with the cookies banner that IDCAC removed.
| tomxor wrote:
| However it was revealed not long ago that a lot of the
| third party cookie consent forms used by the majority of
| sites don't actually have any effect when you interact
| with them... i.e they tracked everything whether you
| consented to it or not, I think it was a combination of
| negligence (incomplete software) and betting on the fact
| that the vast majority of people just hit accept due to
| dark patterns that make it extremely inconvenient to do
| otherwise.
|
| I think using uBlock etc is more likely to result in
| preventing tracking through blocking known urls and code
| etc compared to hiding consent forms... I know it's far
| from infallible but currently most trackers don't bother
| going to extremes if you block them.
| Larrikin wrote:
| I'd rather be actively hostile to the ads and tracking and
| use Ad Nauseum, instead of passively blocking them with
| just UbO
| Semaphor wrote:
| But then you also wouldn't have been using this extension
| which defaulted to allowing all possible tracking when it
| couldn't figure the popup out.
|
| This was an extension for people who don't care about
| privacy.
| wartijn_ wrote:
| I have (had, soon) this add-on and I very much care a out
| privacy. Blocking all cookies from non-whitelisted sites
| is more or less impossible with all the consent pop ups.
| Ant many of those pop ups make it really hard to reject
| cookies.
|
| So I went for a solution that makes browsing less
| annoying, whithout storing many cookies:
|
| - Have this add on accept all cookies - Block third party
| cookies - Delete cookies from websites as soon as I close
| a tab
|
| I (and you) don't know if many users of this add on do
| something similar, but it is what's recommended on the
| website
|
| > Please educate yourself about cookie related privacy
| issues and ways to protect yourself and your data. For
| example, you can block 3rd party cookies, install ad
| blocking extensions and then block tracking tools, delete
| browsing data regularly, enable Tracking Protection in
| your browser etc.
| sdze wrote:
| Blocking cookie popups renders some pages unusable. For
| instance adidas. I could not scroll when blocking cookie
| prompt.
| walthamstow wrote:
| I have recovered and am hosting the version 3.4.2 source code,
| the version prior to the Avast acquisition, at the below repo
|
| https://github.com/elgrove/idcac-3.4.2
| sam1r wrote:
| I'm not a browser extension developer -- but I wonder how long
| it would take for another extension that does _exactly_ the
| same thing.
| no-reply wrote:
| If you are on 3.4.2 from 12-Aug-22, then a better option can be
| to disable auto update for the extension.
| Probable8618 wrote:
| The license is still GPLv3 so anyone can take the source code,
| slap it on GitHub and maintain a more community run alternative.
| maccard wrote:
| > The license is still GPLv3 so anyone can take the source
| code, slap it on GitHub and maintain a more community run
| alternative.
|
| 2 out of 3 of those things are very easy, but "maintain a more
| community run alternative" is an enormous undertaking.
| mdrzn wrote:
| "I will keep working on the project and the extension will remain
| free to use" seems the best outcome of selling something
| luckylion wrote:
| * (we'll monetize your data instead, keeping the extension free
| to use)
| kytazo wrote:
| Ok thanks, I uninstalled it already
| Raed667 wrote:
| I decompiled the extension a while back and it is a series of
| custom JS code for each website or CMP provider with matching
| rules.
|
| Only checked the bundled version but the code seemed very custom
| and labor intensive to keep up with website changes. Best of luck
| to future forks and maintainers.
|
| I didn't spend too much time on it, because a filter based
| approach seemed more maintainable.
| StephenSmith wrote:
| Is there a version of this product that tells the site to block
| all cookies automatically? It seems this just answers whatever is
| easiest to keep the site running.
| noasaservice wrote:
| Thank you for the plugin removal notice.
| [deleted]
| shp0ngle wrote:
| I remember older version of this extension was distributed under
| GPL... maybe someone can dig it up and put it on github.
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Ah it still is, as of 3.4.2. The newest version is still GPLv3.
|
| It's in Chrome extensions folder in Profile, in LICENSE.
|
| I think that means the extension can still be put to github
| even right now and re-distributed.
| walthamstow wrote:
| I have recovered and am hosting the version 3.4.2 source code,
| the version prior to the Avast acquisition, at the below repo
|
| https://github.com/elgrove/idcac-3.4.2
| zac23or wrote:
| Avast - a famous and trustworthy IT company.
|
| You can call Avast many things, but a "trustworthy IT company."
| is not one of those things.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| What's the best alternative?
| Tajnymag wrote:
| You could add the underlying list to ublock. Or use a different
| list like Fanboy's Annoyance or EasyList Cookie
| wartijn_ wrote:
| This extention clicks on accept on every cookie notice you
| encountered. I don't think you can just block all those
| notices and expect sites to keep working.
| fariszr wrote:
| Oh I thought it just removed the notices, good to know at
| last lol.
|
| I delete cookies every time I close the browser anyway.
| Kuinox wrote:
| I run with this and I had few issues. Rarely, a site break
| yeah, but that it.
| luckylion wrote:
| I've never looked into that, but how many CMPs are there,
| really? It feels like it's a pretty small market and very
| few people are rolling their own solution, so it shouldn't
| be too hard to shim them, I naively believe.
|
| Not having to wait for Cookiebot's slow servers to get
| their act together would be quite refreshing.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Thanks but I'm already using both and this fails to reject or
| accept cookies prompts most of the time.
| bni wrote:
| Hush
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| That's for Safari only right? I don't care about cookies does
| not support Safari and I'm on Firefox.
| _joel wrote:
| That's me deleting it
| margarina72 wrote:
| ok, removed. Turns out ublock can do that too... On the bright
| side, Avast has less cash and some cool dev out there got to bank
| on its project.
| dinkblam wrote:
| Avast was caught stealing data from their users a while back:
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjdkq7/avast-antivirus-sells...
|
| so calling them 'a famous and trustworthy IT company' is quite a
| thing. infamous perhaps.
| uwuemu wrote:
| I have one question: Why THE HELL isn't this a part of all
| browsers already? Why does it have to be some obscure 3rd party
| extension? And I don't mean just Chrome, I mean all of them.
| All browsers should have this option: "I don't care about gdpr
| cookies". Set a window object window.dontcare and done. Sites
| can check this and automatically comfirm or don't even show
| gdpr banners if window.dontcare is set. This cookie bullcrap
| has been a forced on all of us from the bureaucrat bastards in
| the EU, and now everyone has to click on what are essentially
| popup banners of the 2000s every time they visit a new site (or
| even the same site a bit later!). Fuck that. No, let me say it
| again: FUCK THAT.
|
| Implementing this into a browser would be the biggest QOL
| improvement any web browser could possibly do at this point.
| rileymat2 wrote:
| There would be very little value to a website respecting that
| flag if it is a significant part of revenue.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| He is talking about window.dontcare not window.icare
| [deleted]
| dskloet wrote:
| How would asking if it's OK to store cookies when you know
| the user doesn't care be part of revenue?
| yrro wrote:
| Waah the big bad EU forced companies to disclose how they are
| using my data!
|
| What I would like to see browsers do is grow a feature that
| tells web servers what uses of my data I consider acceptable,
| so that I don't have to waste my time every time I visit
| nearly every site on the entire damn Internet.
|
| But we've been there before - P3P, Do-Not-Track, and now
| Global Privacy Control. Until regulators force web sites to
| obey signals from browsers, we're going to be stuck with
| these bloody popups.
| IMTDb wrote:
| Big bad from the EU from forbidding your solution. Website
| have to receive informed and specific consent.
|
| This means that before getting your consent, each website
| has to show you the text. And they cannot get your consent
| from a setting that does not correspond to them,
| specifically.
|
| So if you tell your browser: << I accept that website track
| me on what I do on them, but do not allow marketing related
| stuff >>, website are not allowed to recognise that level
| of consent, skip the banner and act accordingly.
| nicbou wrote:
| What about an informed "absolutely not"?
| IMTDb wrote:
| How can you tell "absolutely not" without going through
| the 37 pages of their policy, to make sure you understand
| exactly what you say "no" to ? Maybe there is something
| different about _this specific website_ that might make
| you say "I usually say no, but this time, I'll say yes".
|
| So, please read those pages - on every website - then
| systematically click on "Reject all". That's what the law
| asks you to do, and it is indeed absolutely nuts.
| Bewelge wrote:
| In that case websites will absolutely show you a banner
| and/or intentionally make their services more difficult
| to use.
|
| Any website showing a cookie banner already prioritizes
| their ad revenue over your convenience of not seeing a
| banner. So why would they implement any extra work to
| spare you that banner, if you're one of those customers
| that won't drive ad revenue?
| nicbou wrote:
| I know, I know. If you introduce a blanket "no", websites
| will ignore it. They're not tracking us because it's what
| we want.
| grey_earthling wrote:
| Any website that's asking for your permission upfront is
| not getting informed and specific consent; it's getting
| general consent.
|
| A decently-designed website would just tell you it's
| about to set a cookie with a "more info" link. If you
| choose to go ahead, that's informed specific consent.
|
| Besides, under the GDPR companies can collect and store
| personal data without needing consent if it's for one of
| the listed permitted purposes. They only need consent at
| all if they have no good reason to collect the data --
| consent is really supposed to be the excuse of last
| resort.
| RunSet wrote:
| > Website have to receive informed and specific consent.
|
| Websites only have to ask consent to track you if they
| track you in the first place. Sucks to suck.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| I'd go for a much simpler solution. Make the cookie
| tracking opt-in, no popups or other barrier allowed. If the
| added value is supposedly so significant for users then
| surely those 0.1% of people will open the settings and
| enable cookies.
| lazyier wrote:
| > Waah the big bad EU forced companies to disclose how they
| are using my data!
|
| The people that should be mocked are the EU bureaucrats
| that thought this was a good idea and the people that
| defend it.
|
| It's a idiotic legislation that does NOTHING to protect
| your data. It's feel-good nonsense that EU can occasionally
| use as a club to extort business corporations that they
| want something from.
|
| The only thing that it accomplished is to create a false
| sense of security in the public.
|
| These companies are not trustworthy and neither is the EU
| government.
|
| The correct solution to this problem is at the browser
| level and at the human level. Don't disclose information to
| the internet you don't want to show up on the internet.
| IMTDb wrote:
| I fully agree with you BUT you proposal is actually not
| allowed by the GDPR law. The legislation forbids website to
| trust a global setting when choosing how to handle cookies.
|
| In other words: browsers are perfectly allowed and capable of
| implementing the setting, but websites are forbidden to use
| it.
|
| Yep, it's that crazy. The legislator _really_ likes blocking
| banners.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I'm 99% confident that this announcement and the language used
| was part of the purchase deal.
| marcodiego wrote:
| AFAIK the license is GPLv3. So avast is acquiring what exactly?
| The name?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| The account in the extension store, and the ability to auto-
| update everyone's installed version for their own goals -
| whichever they may be.
| dessant wrote:
| This is your cue to remove the extension from your browser
| immediately. I've been developing extensions for years, and I've
| never seen an extension acquisition done by a company like Avast
| not transform the extension into a data harvesting operation.
|
| Judging by the size of the user base the author was paid at least
| 100k USD, all for an open source project that is free to fork.
| Avast has acquired you, the user, and the original maintainer
| continuing to work on the project is just a ruse, the new owners
| prefer to do it this way to reduce user loss until the business
| end of a future extension update is pushed out to your devices.
| b3orn wrote:
| Oh, I think in this case it's a match made in heaven. It's an
| extension for people who don't care about data harvesting.
| OrderlyTiamat wrote:
| I use it to dismiss the popups, and the cookies get deleted
| after. So actually I do care about data harvesting, but I
| also care about a popup free internet.
| munk-a wrote:
| There exist uBlock origin lists to block most of those
| popups from ever popping up if you want a safer approach.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The "element picker" feature of uBlock Origin makes it
| generally easy to manually remove these sort of
| annoyances too. It can also do things like remove
| floating headers that follow you when you scroll down the
| page, covering article text you're trying to read (such
| as the one that is on the OP blog post.)
| autoexec wrote:
| I use an add-on called "nuke anything" which lets you
| just rightclick on anything you don't like and get rid of
| it. Works great for most things, but element picker works
| well too.
| nwellnhof wrote:
| I found that "I don't care about cookies" blocks a lot
| more popups, especially from German websites. Maybe
| because the developer is based in Europe.
| londons_explore wrote:
| A lot of sites are non-functional till you either accept
| or reject the cookies.
|
| For example, video embeds rarely work because they need
| to know if you accept cookies before deciding which
| preroll ad to play.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| When I see a youtube embed, the frame for which is
| blocked by default using umatrix, I right-click it and
| open it with mpv. With my configuration, mpv performs
| better at video playback than any browser, saving me
| battery life. It also lets me use keybindings I'm
| familiar with, easily screenshot the video with a single
| press of the s key, and make video clips of the video
| too. This also bypasses youtube's age gating, without
| requiring me to have an account.
|
| The same works for vimeo, dailymotion, etc. Even if the
| video embed doesn't even get created in the first place
| because I didn't run that page's javascript (I only run
| javacript on a whitelist basis), I can usually watch a
| video that would have been embedded in it by simply
| directing mpv to the hosting page itself. This even works
| for most local news websites (which seem to be the
| trashiest sort of pages on the web.)
| throw10920 wrote:
| > I right-click it and open it with mpv
|
| That's a _super_ neat feature - where does it come from?
| uMatrix?
| cercatrova wrote:
| Just drag the URL into an open MPV window. VLC can do the
| same.
| mort96 wrote:
| Nothing "just" about that. Right click -> open in MPV is
| low friction. Launching MPV, arranging your windows so
| that both MPV and the browser is visible at the same time
| and then doing a drag-and-drop is much higher friction.
| nvr219 wrote:
| I use Remove Sticky bookmarklet (so not even an extension)
| - https://lolfi.com/posts/removesticky/
| nvr219 wrote:
| the bookmarklet in question is:
|
| ```
|
| javascript:(function()%7B%20let%20i%2C%20elements%20%3D%2
| 0document.querySelectorAll('body%20*')%3B%20for%20(i%20%3
| D%200%3B%20i%20%3C%20elements.length%3B%20i%2B%2B)%20%7B%
| 20if(getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D).position%20%3D%3D%
| 3D%20'fixed'%20%7C%7C%20getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D)
| .position%20%3D%3D%3D%20'sticky')%7B%20elements%5Bi%5D.pa
| rentNode.removeChild(elements%5Bi%5D)%3B%20%7D%20%7D%20%7
| D)()
|
| ```
| citruscomputing wrote:
| Yep. Just import their filter list to uBlock Origin, and move
| on.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| And then switch to Firefox, apparently, since uBO filter
| lists are likely about to break on chromium.
| autoexec wrote:
| Hell, switch to Firefox anyways. It's pretty nice!
| jordemort wrote:
| Thanks for the tip, I didn't realize this was possible. Even
| if the extension wasn't sold, I'm still happier running one
| less extension.
|
| For those looking for the list, here it is:
| https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/abp/
| DavideNL wrote:
| Unfortunately this does not work for many websites... it
| requires additional clicking which is done via javascript or
| something.
|
| I think the IDCAC extension would probably not even exist if
| it was just a simple filter...
| duxup wrote:
| It's kinda sad what the browser extension ecosystem has become.
|
| Seems like a neat hobbyist / handy tool space that quickly
| turned into a sorta predatory space.
| dessant wrote:
| It's not just browser extensions, but any popular software
| project that has no stable funding source. This extension has
| been maintained for years, and it requires a lot of effort to
| keep updated because it interacts with websites.
|
| These developers are then offered funds for perhaps a new
| home, and they can hardly be faulted for taking the deal.
| This issue can only be solved by finding better ways to fund
| the development of popular software projects that serve the
| public good.
|
| https://armin.dev/blog/2019/08/supporting-browser-
| extension-...
| duxup wrote:
| So true.
|
| Rando popular freeware suddenly has an installer from hell
| and so on.
| munk-a wrote:
| I actually prefer the funding model where occasionally
| these free software developers do receive a big payday
| without any shame or stigma and a fork of their project is
| almost instantly launched under different branding. So
| Avast gets a one time user network buyout but the
| functionality of the tool persists in availability. Better
| funding for the project while it remains free is never a
| bad thing though, if you get a lot of value out of some
| free software you use please never forget to tip or even
| patreon/other-subscription-payment-plan its continued
| development!
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| This is why I generally only use ones that are approved by
| mozilla that I have researched. Of course I currently have 5
| extensions because I'm pretty cautious.
| MasterYoda wrote:
| I just turned of auto update for the "I dont care of cookie"
| addon, just as a precautionary measure to see how this ends and
| until there is an good replacement.
| no-reply wrote:
| Me too.
| loudandskittish wrote:
| "A cookie has been detected"
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I miss the days when antivirus protected against spyware and
| adware, now even your browser and OS get in on the game and
| employs hostile tricks.
| _joel wrote:
| I wonder how many viruses were created by AV companies though?
| :)
| walthamstow wrote:
| I have recovered and am hosting the source code for version
| 3.4.2, the version prior to the Avast acquisition, on GitHub at
| the following
|
| https://github.com/elgrove/idcac-3.4.2
|
| I am not well versed in open source licensing but I believe the
| GPL3 gives me permission to do this. Please could someone more
| knowledgeable confirm this for me.
|
| I am not a web developer, I'm hosting the code in the hope that
| someone else will take it and fork it. It's one of my favourite
| extensions and a day 1 install on any new machine, along with UBO
| Oktokolo wrote:
| Yes, the GPL 3 grants you the right to do this.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| yep you can do whatever you want with it
| dark-star wrote:
| no, certainly not
| rektide wrote:
| _Consent-o-mattic_ and
|
| _Auto Cookie Optout_ are both pretty good.
|
| They also let you block rather tham accept all cookies. Wild to
| me that the accept all cookies extension has been the winning
| one, but they have a cute name. You should care though, caring is
| cool & good, & you _should_ care about privacy online & reducing
| the vast capitalist-survelliance machinery. It's easy, just use a
| non apathetic extension instead of one whose whole premise has
| been apathy.
|
| (I hear uBlock Origin has an anti-annoyance filter or filters
| that does something to deal with cookie banners but unsure what.)
|
| https://github.com/cavi-au/Consent-O-Matic
|
| https://github.com/CodyMcCodington/AutoCookieOptout
| aneutron wrote:
| So this URL just jumped to me opened by the extension. I
| instantly uninstalled it, and reported it to Mozilla.
|
| I hate that I have to, but I have to.
| xfalcox wrote:
| OH NO, this is my favorite extension. What to do now?
| moviuro wrote:
| Write more filters for uBlock Origin and unbreak the web?
|
| e.g.
| https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardFilters/tree/master/An...
| awiesenhofer wrote:
| Filters wont help you here, the extension actively clicked
| the consent forms for you, not something you can do with
| filter lists.
| moviuro wrote:
| No forms = no consent = unbroken Web.
| yahooboi wrote:
| t0bia_s wrote:
| Any alternatives? Cookies baners are incredibly annoying.
| citruscomputing wrote:
| They have a filter list: https://www.i-dont-care-about-
| cookies.eu/abp/
|
| If you have uBlock Origin, go to settings, filter lists, scroll
| to bottom, custom, import, paste this URL. Enable AdGuard
| annoyances while you're at it. It's not perfect, but this
| replicates the "don't show me cookie dialogs" feature pretty
| well.
| celsoazevedo wrote:
| uBO doesn't accept or reject though and that is required for
| some sites to work. That's why I used this extension and uBO.
| DavideNL wrote:
| This one perhaps?
|
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/consent-o-mat...
|
| https://github.com/cavi-au/Consent-O-Matic
| sttav wrote:
| Shit
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| If the community really cares, raise some money and buy it back
| from them.
| meibo wrote:
| Avast is the worst of the worst snake oil AVs. I wouldn't let
| them anywhere near my browser.
| cbsks wrote:
| I can think of lots of nefarious reasons why a company would buy
| a browser extension, but I'm having a hard time thinking of a a
| potential good outcome of this. If we put on our optimism hats,
| why would Avast buy an extension? What benefit could they
| possibly get from it?
|
| Edit: Maybe it is just a talent acquisition?
| burkaman wrote:
| Avast has its own browser, maybe they wanted to implement this
| feature natively in the browser and figured it would just be
| easier to acquire an already working solution.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| There's no utility in trying to steel-man the actions of a
| known bad actor. Avast is a malware company. Would you try to
| guess at the optimistic reasons a gangster like Al Capone has
| for buying all the businesses in your neighborhood?
| ask_otter wrote:
| Browser extensions were main data source for their analytics
| subsidiary Jumpshot [1], which was shutdown for privacy
| reasons. Before that, when Mozilla and Opera started asking
| about their extensions, they rather removed them [2].
|
| [1]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjdkq7/avast-antivirus-
| sells...
|
| [2]: https://palant.info/2019/12/03/mozilla-removes-avast-
| extensi...
| mort96 wrote:
| That's one of the nefarious reasons, not one of the
| optimistic ones.
| cbsks wrote:
| That's troubling. My optimism hat is starting to look
| silly...
| sullivanmatt wrote:
| In this case yes, it sounds like the pessimistic viewpoint
| may be the right one. However, for a while now HN has been
| going downhill with armchair analysis that inevitably
| concludes that any action taken by a business is
| wrong/harmful/bad, so I am thankful you took the time to be
| thoughtful before reacting.
| dylan604 wrote:
| whenever it comes to web/data/privacy, default should be to
| not trust anyone, block all requests, deny deny deny. if
| and only if a company can prove they can be trusted, then
| on a compay-by-company/site-by-site basis should they be
| allowed to do things. that should be a very steep hill to
| climb.
|
| blanket optimism sounds like a nice lifestyle of the young,
| but with age comes realization the world only takes
| advantage and wisdom leads to being more pessimistic.
| question everything including authority is how i was
| raised.
| NeveHanter wrote:
| Well two things/questions:
|
| 1. Can we somehow get Mozilla/Firefox ban/de-list the extension
| from the extension store so Avast doesn't get the user-base this
| extension has/had?
|
| 2. We should be able to get the author to publish the source code
| of the latest version licensed under GPLv3, any way to do this,
| except asking on Twitter/LinkedIn?
| edf13 wrote:
| Why should you be able to get source code of someone's private
| work?
| NeveHanter wrote:
| If it's GPLv3 licensed, then I should be able to request and
| get the access to the source code:
|
| https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-
| faq.html#MustSourceBuildToM...
|
| and
|
| https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt section 6, point d
| Vinnl wrote:
| That only applies to redistributors, not to the original
| author. The way the GPL works, is that the author absconds
| some of the copyright they hold by default, in exchange for
| people taking advantage of that committing to publishing
| even modified source code whenever they redistribute it.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Abscond means to hide or steal away. I think you mean
| abdicate? That would make more sense in this context.
| It's still not quite right though, the author of a GPL
| work fully retains the copyright of their work, and
| merely give a license to others.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Oh sorry yes, I'm not a native speaker, thanks. And yes,
| they commit to not exercising some of the rights they
| have been granted as part of the copyright they do indeed
| still hold.
| Zufriedenheit wrote:
| I think Firefox extensions are just archives. So with that
| license it should be allowed to simply download the extension,
| unpack it and throw it on Github.
| [deleted]
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| This is why I want a browser with an extension repository that is
| managed in the same way linux distros like debian manage their
| repositories. It should only allow open source extensions in the
| repository, packaged by employees or volunteers known to the
| organization. If the upstream gets sold to a malware company like
| Avast, that package is forked or simply removed from the
| repositories if a trusted maintainer for a fork cannot be found.
| xg15 wrote:
| I mean, take a look at how many projects recommend curl | sh as
| the official way of installing their software and how many
| "alternative" package managers there are, where devs can just
| push updates directly.
|
| The desire of developers to get around distro maintainers and
| grab full control of update distribution is strong...
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I don't care about that. I am not asking for a browser or a
| linux distro that forbids the installation of extensions not
| in the repository. I want a browser that has a repository I
| can trust, as already exist for linux distros.
|
| I cannot trust either Mozilla or Google's extension
| repositories, they are 'managed' in a substandard manner
| relative to Debian or android's F-Droid. Both of these
| extension repositories are managed so poorly it seems
| farcical to say they're managed at all.
| xg15 wrote:
| In the current case, the extension used to be perfectly
| trustworthy, then it got sold with the full permission of
| the author.
|
| I'd like such a repository too, but the "extensions going
| bad" dynamic usually happens with the full cooperation of
| the extension's developer, so I could imagine many
| extension developers would be actively opposed to such a
| repo. Therefore, the browser would have to possibly act
| against the wishes of the developers here and e.g. keep an
| earlier version of an extension available even if the
| developer would like to remove it.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The problem is when the extension owner is the same as
| the extension packager, and the repo doesn't enforce any
| meaningful review or standards before allowing an updated
| extension to be pushed to their repo.
|
| If this extension were a program packaged by Debian or
| F-Droid, this wouldn't happen. The upstream can sell out
| and start publishing malicious updates but they can't
| push those updates to Debian or F-Droid, because they
| don't have the necessary permissions to do so. They would
| need to buy out or trick the Debian or F-Droid package
| maintainers, which I generally trust to not happen (and I
| haven't been burned by this trust before.)
|
| This scheme works fine for the majority of software I
| give a shit about. Some developers don't like this scheme
| and that's fine, for the most part I simply choose to not
| use their software. I don't want this scheme forced on
| either users or developers, it's entirely voluntary on
| both ends. It could exist for browsers just as it does
| for linux and android, but as far as I know it presently
| doesn't.
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