Hello guys and gals, it's me Mutahar again! This time we take a look at an alarming discovery where it turns out viewing ads on your system without even inte...
That will break functionality at first. But over time, you build up a whitelist of allowed scripts. Usually, you can re-enable a website’s functionality while leaving tracking pixels and the like disabled.
For example, I had to add Cloudfare’s captcha shit to the permanent whitelist, because half the damn internet is inaccessible of you don’t do that. But Cloudfare’s analytics tracking shit is always always blocked.
I’ve been using noscript for a great many years, but lately the functionality started to break. There are websites where even if every item is whitelisted the page wouldn’t load without disabling noscript. Probably will need a bit more sophisticated script blocker eventually, if anyone makes one.
Yeah, I’ve seen that a few times. Luckily, none of the websites that are important to me fall into that category.
Most of the time when I find a site like that, I just say fuck it and go to a different site instead. If I really need that site for something, I’ll open it up in (mostly vanilla) Brave instead of the noscript Firefox I’m usually using.
But if I whitelist the whole site those pixels and buttons are also enabled, correct? Or how to disable those and keep website functionality? It doesn’t work with either browser I have but I may change that.
You don’t have to whitelist the whole site at once. Most sites break up their scripts into multiple categories that come from different servers, and noscript lets you pick and choose which of those to block.
You can usually get most of the site’s core functionality working while still blocking most of the ads and trackers and junk.
That’d be awesome. Do you know the particular scripts used by m_ta (pixels and button), r_ddit, twitler, etc? Not just for my future reference, but everyone’s? No is ok, I just thought I’d ask, just in case.
Thanks so much for your time and patience to reply several times.
Generally, it’s not hard to figure out – the options noscript gives you for disabling them are usually clearly labeled. Cloudflare’s tracking shows up as “Cloudflare Analytics”, for example – an easy and obvious one to leave on the ‘blocked’ list.
Just give it a whirl and see how it goes. Install the browser extension, and whenever you visit a site that doesn’t work, click on the little noscript button and try changing important-looking scripts from ‘blocked’ to ‘temporarily allowed’. If doing that fixes the site’s functionality and you’ll be using that site a lot, you can then change that to ‘allowed’ and have it permanently whitelisted, and it will work every time you go back. (Fair warning, though: some sites have a very long list of different scripts, and it can sometimes be difficult to figure out which ones are required for site functionality and which aren’t. But a little trial and error will always work it out eventually. Often, it’s actually pretty obvious. Core functionality scripts are often named directly after the site you’re trying to use while all the ads and tracking and shit has different names.)
Is there any way to block tracking pixels and tracking social media buttons without breaking functionality of websites?
Is there a reason you want to use sites that are actively spying on you?
If it breaks, they aren’t worth your time.
Occasionally, such a site might be the only source for something.
I have to poke around fairly often while moderating, especially with very recent news
Yes but such exploits have been getting fixed in recent years.
Can you convert the page into RSS and read it that way? Some sites don’t convert and I never understood why but that might be worth looking into.
No idea 🤷♀️
noscript
That will break functionality at first. But over time, you build up a whitelist of allowed scripts. Usually, you can re-enable a website’s functionality while leaving tracking pixels and the like disabled.
For example, I had to add Cloudfare’s captcha shit to the permanent whitelist, because half the damn internet is inaccessible of you don’t do that. But Cloudfare’s analytics tracking shit is always always blocked.
I’ve been using noscript for a great many years, but lately the functionality started to break. There are websites where even if every item is whitelisted the page wouldn’t load without disabling noscript. Probably will need a bit more sophisticated script blocker eventually, if anyone makes one.
Yeah, I’ve seen that a few times. Luckily, none of the websites that are important to me fall into that category.
Most of the time when I find a site like that, I just say fuck it and go to a different site instead. If I really need that site for something, I’ll open it up in (mostly vanilla) Brave instead of the noscript Firefox I’m usually using.
But if I whitelist the whole site those pixels and buttons are also enabled, correct? Or how to disable those and keep website functionality? It doesn’t work with either browser I have but I may change that.
You don’t have to whitelist the whole site at once. Most sites break up their scripts into multiple categories that come from different servers, and noscript lets you pick and choose which of those to block.
You can usually get most of the site’s core functionality working while still blocking most of the ads and trackers and junk.
That’d be awesome. Do you know the particular scripts used by m_ta (pixels and button), r_ddit, twitler, etc? Not just for my future reference, but everyone’s? No is ok, I just thought I’d ask, just in case.
Thanks so much for your time and patience to reply several times.
Generally, it’s not hard to figure out – the options noscript gives you for disabling them are usually clearly labeled. Cloudflare’s tracking shows up as “Cloudflare Analytics”, for example – an easy and obvious one to leave on the ‘blocked’ list.
Just give it a whirl and see how it goes. Install the browser extension, and whenever you visit a site that doesn’t work, click on the little noscript button and try changing important-looking scripts from ‘blocked’ to ‘temporarily allowed’. If doing that fixes the site’s functionality and you’ll be using that site a lot, you can then change that to ‘allowed’ and have it permanently whitelisted, and it will work every time you go back. (Fair warning, though: some sites have a very long list of different scripts, and it can sometimes be difficult to figure out which ones are required for site functionality and which aren’t. But a little trial and error will always work it out eventually. Often, it’s actually pretty obvious. Core functionality scripts are often named directly after the site you’re trying to use while all the ads and tracking and shit has different names.)
Thanks so much, for everyone who hasn’t used it or forgotten.