Ad Buster Buster - Chrome to limit ad blocking to Enterprise users only

[dalekphalm]

This is bad news.

 

I use an Adblocker, like most others here. I typically whitelist any site I actually use though - and yes, that includes YouTube.

 

The good news (or, shall I say, "less terrible news") is that Chrome for Enterprise appears to be free. For now anyway.

[Jito463]

10 hours ago, Doobeedoo said:

Soon subscription based web browser everybody. Hahaha. 

I don't use it though. 

Or we could go back to paid browsers, like we had in the 90's and early 2000's.

4 hours ago, Mr. horse said:

That is not funny. Its very true. We now know that you use multi factor logins and have random passwords. So one would have a jump start on cracking an account of yours.

There is literally nothing he posted that would give any potentially malicious operator a "leg up" or "jump start" on getting his password.  Fear mongering at its best.

[maartendc]

I use Firefox exclusively. Not a problem for me.

 

Since they totally redesigned it from the ground up in version 61 or so, it is super fast, actually faster than Chrome I think.

 

It is open source, no Google tracking, good extensions, Firefox Sync syncs your bookmarks etc across devices. Why not use it?

[rcmaehl]

49 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

This is bad news.

 

I use an Adblocker, like most others here. I typically whitelist any site I actually use though - and yes, that includes YouTube.

 

The good news (or, shall I say, "less terrible news") is that Chrome for Enterprise appears to be free. For now anyway.

Chrome Enterprise is free but an Enterprise Google (G Suite) account is not, which I believe 9-5 Google means.

[dalekphalm]

8 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

Chrome Enterprise is free but an Enterprise Google (G Suite) account is not, which I believe 9-5 Google means.

Is a G Suite account required? I was able to download Enterprise Chrome easily. I have yet to install or test it though.

[rcmaehl]

46 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Is a G Suite account required? I was able to download Enterprise Chrome easily. I have yet to install or test it though.

Having installed Chrome Enterprise hundreds of times, it doesn't seem so. Then again, I've ONLY installed it on Windows 7/10 Enterprise machines and don't know if it gives an error otherwise.

[Guest]

On 5/30/2019 at 10:24 AM, DrMacintosh said:

*laughs in Safari* 

Any luck on a good adblocker for safari? Adblock Plus doesn’t block YT ads for me, and uBlock makes it a little slow, and some ads get through - no video ads though. 

[DrMacintosh]

Just now, floofer said:

Any luck on a good adblocker for safari? Adblock Plus doesn’t block YT ads for me, and uBlock makes it a little slow, and some ads get through - no video ads though. 

Wiper. It's paid but it works! I think it's like a dollar. 

[porina]

Installed latest Firefox on my work system + ublock origin. Not really used it in anger yet but at first glance, after turning off smooth scrolling which I hate, it is pretty much the same as Chrome. I'll try it some more over time. Maybe there are little things I notice later...

[XR6]

Damn you Google. Looks like I'll be switching to Firefox. I guess this explains why my ad blocker hasn't been working properly recently..

[Loote]

15 hours ago, Mr. horse said:

There are other ways to crack a password then going through every combination. With a tick more info we might find out that he uses a password generator to make these random passwords. And if we know what the password generator is we may find that is has a flaw in it and one could use that flaw to crack his password. 

There are also dictionary attacks, but we now know that would not be worth trying if we wanted to brake into one of his accounts.

 

Like I said before. it gives the bad guys a head start. Its not a smoking gun like saying I use birthdays or something. But its still a very bad idea to give that kind of info out.

It's a bad idea in case he has flawed password manager, and even then you'd have to know his login to a service that has flawed 2nd factor too. What he posted mostly means that you should use social hacking techniques instead of trying to guess.

I use KeePass, I use shitty passwords on multiple sites I don't care about for convenience and my password storage is unlocked most of the time at home, even at work it locks after 5 minute inactivity and I don't lock it manually. Proper security is a PITA and most don't follow procedures.

[LAwLz]

18 hours ago, Phentos said:

Hello Firefox. 

 

Semi-related question: Does Firefox have a better password manager than Lastpass that I would be able to import my info to? I've gotten tired of that app's quirks as of late, and the Android app for it is hot garbage.  

Firefox's regular password manager is very bare bones and not that great. However, they have recently released something called "Firefox Lockbox". I haven't used it myself, but if I understand it correctly it's similar to Lastpass.

 

 

18 hours ago, Mr. horse said:

Firefox password manager is crap. Anyone that is on you PC can see your saved passwords. They are not encrypted or anything.

They are encrypted if you enable the master password.

 

14 hours ago, Gealach said:

But if your extension doesn't work with Chrome, then you don't have to make a choice

True that, but if everyone rushes to make their own Chromium fork which supports adblocking then developers of uBlock and others might have to develop like 10 different versions to function with all different APIs. It will be a mess.

 

13 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Ghostery and/or other browser extension developers have said that they will file anti-trust lawsuits if Google goes through with it. 

Source: 

https://9to5google.com/2019/01/23/ghostery-anti-trust-chrome-ad-blocking/

That's great news.

Hopefully it will limit Google's control over the Internet.

 

 

13 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

The good news (or, shall I say, "less terrible news") is that Chrome for Enterprise appears to be free. For now anyway.

That's not really a good solution though. Hell, people installing Enterprise Chrome might even be worse than if someone forks Chromium. If people switch over to Chrome for Enterprise then they are still under Google's control, and Google can whenever they feel like it impose the same API restrictions, or make it more difficult to install Chrome for enterprise (for example requiring you sign in with a valid Google account).

 

 

 

 

But I want to take the time to really rub it in everyone's faces that this is a great example of EEE (embrace, extend extinguish) which is happening in an open source program.

The reason why I want to highlight this is that several people on this forum has told me, over and over, that EEE is just fearmongering if something is open source. It is not.

[CarlBar]

36 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

But I want to take the time to really rub it in everyone's faces that this is a great example of EEE (embrace, extend extinguish) which is happening in an open source program.

The reason why I want to highlight this is that several people on this forum has told me, over and over, that EEE is just fearmongering if something is open source. It is not.

 

Really. Lol.

 

Seriously there are alternatives out there for people that want them. And if this moves annoys enough people then they will switch, and thats going to force everyone making chromium based browsers to either break ranks with google or accept the lost customers. And if most people don't care, then they wouldn't have cared regardless of how it was done and this would all have happened without the open source aspect.

 

The number 1 thing you can rely on any business to do is to copy each other shamelessly wherever they can get away with it if it's a successful business strategy. WHich means even if they'd had to develop and maintain their browsers from scratch they could be relied upon to copy google if it proves successful. Companies don't exist to do nefarious tings. They exist to make money and you can rely on them to do anything that makes them more or prevents them losing money.

 

 

 

Personally it's going to be very interesting to see what the EU response to this is.I doubt given their issues with google's data gathering activities and how their adds tie into that aspect of things that the EU is going to just ignore it long term.

[Soppro]

Considering Google derives so much of their revenue from ads, I'm surprised they didn't try this earlier

If they really follow through with this, Safari & Firefox here I come!

[Gealach]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

True that, but if everyone rushes to make their own Chromium fork which supports adblocking then developers of uBlock and others might have to develop like 10 different versions to function with all different APIs. It will be a mess.

Let's hope that the various forks just implement the APIs to be the same as the old one.

 

Every time I've emulated someone else's API it's gone pretty well, although this may be a little bit more of a feat then what I was emulating lmao

[Trik'Stari]

I won't be surprised when they lose market share over this.

 

It's all the excuse I need to stop using Chrome.

[LAwLz]

52 minutes ago, Gealach said:

Let's hope that the various forks just implement the APIs to be the same as the old one.

 

Every time I've emulated someone else's API it's gone pretty well, although this may be a little bit more of a feat then what I was emulating lmao

Let's hope.

Although, Oracle won a lawsuit against Google for implementing similar functionality using the same API names.

That means that if someone forked Chromium and added the functionality back using the same API names and functions, they could be sued by Google.

 

 

 

[RejZoR]

58 minutes ago, Gealach said:

Let's hope that the various forks just implement the APIs to be the same as the old one.

 

Every time I've emulated someone else's API it's gone pretty well, although this may be a little bit more of a feat then what I was emulating lmao

On Reddit someone confirmed that Brave will backport the API even when it gets removed in Chromium code. I think Google pretty much played itself thinking they'll make a long term monopoly out of it. Now it's just up to us to educate the normies not to use stupid Chrome...

[Gealach]

1 hour ago, RejZoR said:

On Reddit someone confirmed that Brave will backport the API even when it gets removed in Chromium code. I think Google pretty much played itself thinking they'll make a long term monopoly out of it. Now it's just up to us to educate the normies not to use stupid Chrome...

The crux of the issue is that most people don't use adblock afaik. Every system I use I install adblock on (GF, parents computers, uni computers etc.) because using the internet without adblock is simply not feasible. These people don't know what they're missing out on, and they don't care.

 

That being said, this will also affect add-ons such as Privacy Badger, giving even more reason for people to not use Chrome.

[The King of the Undead]

while fudge! time to import all my stuff to firefox

[JoostinOnline]

I honestly don't understand why anyone who is tech-fluent would use Chrome anyway. It's a huge privacy violator and it's bad for the industry. I get using things like Gmail, because it's tough to switch email providers, but your browser is an easy switch.

[AlTech]

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Firefox's regular password manager is very bare bones and not that great. However, they have recently released something called "Firefox Lockbox". I haven't used it myself, but if I understand it correctly it's similar to Lastpass.

Just an FYI to anyone interested in it, Mozilla renamed it to "Firefox Lockwise".

4 hours ago, LAwLz said:

But I want to take the time to really rub it in everyone's faces that this is a great example of EEE (embrace, extend extinguish) which is happening in an open source program.

The reason why I want to highlight this is that several people on this forum has told me, over and over, that EEE is just fearmongering if something is open source. It is not.

Oh yeah definitely I agree. This is Google doing EEE to an open source project .

[Rakcom]

Great,

So now my extension that blocks images only to reload them in the visual order that they come in will now be rendered useless

[dalekphalm]

5 hours ago, LAwLz said:

That's not really a good solution though. Hell, people installing Enterprise Chrome might even be worse than if someone forks Chromium. If people switch over to Chrome for Enterprise then they are still under Google's control, and Google can whenever they feel like it impose the same API restrictions, or make it more difficult to install Chrome for enterprise (for example requiring you sign in with a valid Google account).

Oh I agree - not a suitable substitute for home users. It is a good solution for work though - we might roll it out (We're already installing both FF and Chrome on our workstations - will investigate replacing Chrome w/ Chrome for Enterprise).

[RejZoR]

3 hours ago, JoostinOnline said:

I honestly don't understand why anyone who is tech-fluent would use Chrome anyway. It's a huge privacy violator and it's bad for the industry. I get using things like Gmail, because it's tough to switch email providers, but your browser is an easy switch.

It's only hard to switch because of registrations tied to the address for services, forums and stuff. If you're using custom domain you can basically switch providers without any issues since your e-mail remains the same. It took me a while to migrate to ProtonMail, but now it's basically done. Maybe I still have some left that are tied to GMail, but I'm not using that anyway if I haven't noticed it yet so I don't care. Or services have gone bust already in the meanwhile.