whotracks.me VS hblock

* There are paid alternatives now, if you want to opt out of what allows them to offer search for "free" then go use those.*

Paying for search won't change the fact that 75% of all web traffic contains Google trackers.

https://whotracks.me/

Thank you for the feedback!

Granted, blocklists (lists of tracking domains or URL query parameters) can be circumvented by a determined attacker. Indeed, I agree that blocklists aren't sufficient on their own for a browser to provide solid privacy protection. In my view it's critical, primarily, to have policies that enforce privacy, including such protections as state partitioning and fingerprinting resistance. That's exactly why I included tests for such policies.

However: I do think blocklists provide substantial, though incomplete, privacy protection in practice. And, importantly, blocklists are enforced by a number of popular browsers (Brave, DuckDuckGo, Firefox Private Mode, Firefox Focus) and popular browser extensions and other services (uBlock, ClearURLs, DuckDuckGo Privacy Essentials, Disconnect, etc.). These blocklists seem to work pretty well, at least judging by the ad-free experience they provide. So I felt that to give a more complete picture I should test for blocking.

I tried to avoid cherry picking query parameters or blockers. Here's how I arrived at the current selections for these two sections:

* Tracking query parameter tests: I tried to gather all the query parameters I could find; the list on the page was my full list at the time. (If there are suggestions for more parameters, I will be happy to add them.)

* Tracker content blocking tests: I used the list of the top 20 tracking entities from https://whotracks.me. These are, roughly speaking, 20 of the most widespread third-party tracking domains on the web -- they should be a high priority for any browser respecting privacy, in my opinion. I hope testing for blocking of these 20 serves to gives a sense of each browser's approach to third-party tracking scripts and pixels.

https://whotracks.me/ and https://www.ghostery.com/ and I wondered how they manage to find all these trackers, I usually only were able to find these hardcoded ones like google analytics on this site for example: https://cellinoplumbing.com/

Ghostery neither collects nor sells data about users or trackers. In fact, they even open the insights they have about the tracking landscape via https://whotracks.me/ so that everyone can benefit from it.

Privacy Badge: Blocks cookies with domains cookies collecting unique identifiers after it was sent a Do Not Track message. Focus only on google, facebook and amazon and check whotracks.me.

I'm talking something like hblock (https://hblock.molinero.dev/) which is for host blocking malceous+ other websites. Imagine blocking every single address manually. To get a picture how impossible it be here is the sample hosts file (https://hblock.molinero.dev/hosts) just do line count and you will understand.

they will never block open source world! For Linux: https://github.com/hectorm/hblock For Linux/Win/Android https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

A quick and dirty solution is just using something likehBlock, that will block most unnecessary traffic (malware from Google, Meta, Microsoft, and generic advertising companies, etc.)

I just came across this tool hblock that seems simpler to install and run.

An Australian got an error with their postal tracking app, compare Hagezi's "OK we'll whitelist it so your app doesn't break" vs hblock's "Meh, go report to the source list maintainer".

If you want systemwide block you may look hblock

Yeah, definitely going to skip that list. Compare how Hagezi and hblock deal with the exact same issue, still not going to adopt it because the hype turns me off, but at least I prefer "ok, we make sure the site you visit doesn't break" compared to dismissive "oh it's a tracker so it's your fault".