A companion extension to uBlock Origin: to gain ability to foil early anti-user mechanisms working around content blockers or even a browser privacy settings.
Manually, using your browser's "Load unpacked extension..." feature:
- Download latest version (.zip) from Releases.
- Go to Extensions, check "Developer mode".
- Click "Load unpacked extension...", select the zip file you downloaded above.
- Keep in mind you will have to update manually when a new version is released.
From the Chrome store:
- https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin-extra/pgdnlhfefecpicbbihgmbmffkjpaplco.
- New version will be updated automatically.
To foil hostile anti-user mechanisms used to work around content blockers or even privacy settings in a browser.
For Chromium-based browsers, WebSocket connections are not available to the chrome.webRequest API. This companion extension (it's pointless to use it as a standalone) will allow uBlock Origin to become aware of WebSocket connection attempts: they can be filtered, and will be reported in the logger.
Related issues:
Instart Logic's technology used to disguise third-party network requests as first-party network requests, including the writing/reading of third-party cookies as first-party cookies. I consider this to be extremely hostile to users, even those not using a content blocker, as it allows third-party servers to read/write cookies even if a user chose to block 3rd-party cookies through your browser setting.
The company behind the technology understand how hostile its technology is to users, and thus tries to hide what is being done by making it difficult to investigate by detecting whether the browser's developer console is opened, and when it detects it is opened, it ceases completely to make use of the obfuscation mechanism. The developer console-detecting code works only for Chromium-based browsers however, and therefore the obfuscation technology is not used when using Firefox (a different web page is served for Firefox).
Related issues:
Many web sites are starting to abuse WebRTC API to work around content blocker. uBO-Extra v2.3+ can prevent these web sites from abusing WebRTC to work around uBO.
Related issues:
You can always visit chrome://webrtc-internals/ to find out if a site is using WebRTC API (left: without uBO-Extra, right: with uBO-Extra):
If you want to block WebRTC connections on a specific site, say example.com, use the filter *$websocket,domain=example.com in uBlock Origin.
The extension has no interactive UI, just an icon in the toolbar to remind it's enabled.
Your browser should allow you to hide the icon if it annoys you. Use uBlock Origin's logger if you want to see and possibly filter WebSocket connections made visible by uBO-Extra.