tracker-radar VS easylist

I think the sub-domain that has the most fingerprinting is et.educationdynamics.com: https://github.com/duckduckgo/tracker-radar/blob/main/domains/US/educationdynamics.com.json

Essentially it creates a VPN configuration to allow it to filter traffic (necessary for that to work), but your traffic isn't actually routed through an external server like a real VPN. It blocks requests for personally identifiable data (device information, personal information, etc.) going to third-party domains that have been added to the DuckDuckGo Tracker Radar dataset. This makes it harder for ad companies to fingerprint you and track your activity across apps and websites for the purpose of targeted advertising.

Why are there so many trackers for this application? 96 attempts at collecting over 34 different metrics for Google when I launched the app. Fairly disappointed. Users feel free to try it yourself with the public duckduckgo tracking app protection here or install the browser through the play store. Go to settings and more from duckduckgo to enable app tracking protection. It creates a filter VPN on your device similar to how most root-free ad blocks work. Launch some apps, even reboot, and see what you find out. Quite a few apps feed abobe, Microsoft, and Google a ton of your info (read the metrics collected) and Plex is one of the top offenders for me right behind Google's own apps.

Considering how DDG maintains a list of known trackers, I was thinking "hey it might be possible to set up a Pi-hole using this", but perhaps this is more trouble than it's worth.

Yes, we are actively evaluating possibilities for add-on support. However, you do not need ublock origin here for privacy protection. Our tracker blocker is powered by our best-in-class Tracker Radar data set (https://github.com/duckduckgo/tracker-radar) which is based on monthly crawls of the web looking for third-party trackers and uncovering the latest tracking techniques. Many academics and companies (including Apple) are now relying on this same data set for research and tracking protection. Similarly our Smarter Encryption (HTTPS upgrading -- https://github.com/duckduckgo/smarter-encryption) is also based on regular web crawls and is many times more comprehensive then anything else out there.

You’ll also notice that your Google search results get far less dynamic as well. Everything will be within a certain proximity or relevance to your geographical location. You used to be able to turn it off and ask that results not be skewed based on it. Now it won’t allow me to. No more generic results. Apparently Google owns around 480 domains that are found to be trackers. Here’s a great compilation of domains and trackers you can look out for- it’s frequently updated and terrifyingly informative.

Yes, private relay is only iCloud users but with Safari 15, the browser hides the user’s actual IP address in requests sent to origins that are listed in DuckDuckGo’s Tracker Radar list. https://github.com/duckduckgo/tracker-radar

I work on App Tracking Protection. We'll have an app tracker dataset in Tracker Radar in the future, as well.

In terms of performance and customizability I don't think any extension beats uBlock Origin. I'm unsure what filter lists Ghostery's extension uses (likely crowdsourced ones) but I think DuckDuckGo solely uses their own Tracker Radar data set which you could probably just import into uBO via Blokada's custom domains version (more here):

uBlock Origin has a few 'Annoyances' lists that you can enable in the settings, e.g. Fanboy's list on https://easylist.to/

import { ScreenshotOptions } from "./schema"; import puppeteer, { Page } from "puppeteer"; import { PuppeteerBlocker } from "@cliqz/adblocker-puppeteer"; import fetch from "cross-fetch"; let blocker: PuppeteerBlocker | null = null; async function blockCookieBanners(page: Page) { if (!blocker) { blocker = await PuppeteerBlocker.fromLists(fetch, [ // the list of the cookie banners to block from the https://easylist.to/ website "https://secure.fanboy.co.nz/fanboy-cookiemonster.txt", ]); } await blocker.enableBlockingInPage(page); } export async function render( options: ScreenshotOptions ): Promise<{ url: string }> { const browser = await puppeteer.launch(); const page = await browser.newPage(); if (options.block_cookie_canners) { await blockCookieBanners(page); } await page.setViewport({ width: options.viewport_width, height: options.viewport_height, deviceScaleFactor: options.device_scale_factor, }); await page.goto(options.url); const encodedScreenshot = await page.screenshot({ type: "jpeg", encoding: "base64", fullPage: options.full_page, }); await browser.close(); return { url: `data:image/jpeg;base64,${encodedScreenshot}` }; }

uBlock Origin has a few lists for cookie banners that I always keep on [0][1]

[0] https://github.com/easylist/easylist/tree/master/easylist_co...

[1] https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardFilters/tree/master/An...

I think this is now fixed (or worked around) by https://github.com/easylist/easylist/issues/17937 ?

You mean the VG Wort METIS tracking in order to participate in the German royalty scheme? From a publisher perspective that tracking is necessary, but from a user perspective it's just another example of third party tracking. Thus, it is part of some filterlists that uBlock Origin users can subscribe to, for example the EasyPrivacy list. Talking to the filterlist authors is very unlikely to resolve this: after all, it is tracking, regardless of intention.

Fixed in EasyList: https://github.com/easylist/easylist/commit/859abc79711aa69441e809a394677f6392b8c59a