I may sound like a Luddite when I occasionally rant about supposedly helpful technology, but I don’t think that’s true. I don’t eschew helpful gadgets; I evaluate them.
Yet it is on these grounds that I recently banished all Chrome extensions from my Web browsers other than homebrew versions. Why? Because I am concerned, deeply concerned, about security.
Take the most dangerous of them all: ad blockers. I find it almost necessary to use one. No, not because I hate ads. I don’t exactly like them either, but I understand how they are an important (and sometimes the only) source of revenue for Web sites that provide useful, sometimes essential, content. But ads can be obnoxious. They may cover the content you’re trying to read. They may autoplay a loud video. The last thing I need in the quiet of a late night is my computer suddenly screaming at me, while I am trying to guess which of the many open tabs is the source of that cacophony.
Yet… ad blockers by definition have access to everything. Literally, everything you do. Yes, that means they can watch you, keep track of you, even steal your passwords. So I decided to opt for paranoia and banished the last ad blocker from my browser.
No, it does not mean that I am without an ad blocker. I now have my own. Not near as polished, not near as thorough as the commercial versions, but it does the job. Better yet, it isn’t even always detected as an ad blocker, precisely because it is a non-standard, not widely known implementation.
I only got rid of the last non-homebrew extension a short while ago, but now I am running across news that (once again!) several malicious extensions were detected in the Google store, all supposedly vetted by Google. So no, I don’t think I’ll be installing any downloaded extensions again, not anytime soon.
And in case you’re wondering… No, I don’t think it’s a good idea to ask me for a copy. Not that I’d refuse. Rather, why would you trust my ad blocker — from an individual, an unvetted source — more than you trust an ad blocker (or other extension) that comes from the official Google store? Conversely, if you cannot trust Google, what makes you think you can trust me?
I think this is my sad commentary for the day, concerning the state of trust and security on today’s Internet.
That’s curious, never thought about that!
By coincidence I almost always am in “incognito mode” of the browser which means without any plugins/extensions. Colleagues think I’m paranoid, but actually I simply dislike collecting history of urls, sessions etc. And tracking data which make pages bloating with ads on some specific topic related to some random google search I’ve made. Of course anonymous mode only partially helps, but still it feels better. I actually have perhaps a couple extensions, but I need to open new non-anonymous window to reach plugin and perform necessary operation with some of them (e.g. running monkey script or getting code from authenticator).
> why would you trust my ad blocker
He-he. Something similar to what I ask when people around me trumpet about using Telegram as “secure messenger”. Sure, sure, person behind it so many times stated about its independence, non-allegiance etc, etc… People around me generally end up concluding I’m an imbecile or something like this. But I just don’t understand their logic of believing to whoever promises the free cheese and makes impression of “opposition-minded person”.