[svlug] (forw) Re: The February Lecture --- Changes in Firefox Offerings

[Don Marti]

begin Rick Moen quotation of Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 12:03:04AM -0800:
> ----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

>    As I also really like the Firefox plugin "CustomizeGoogle" but
>    have noticed there is no new release since October 2008, I decided to
>    setup a WordPress blog to provide a platform to keep the plugin alive.
>    As Google makes changes the plugin needs to change as well.

One problem is that it seems like you need at
least three extensions to get the basic web privacy
functionality.

 * Block third-party JavaScript by default, since
   it's almost always a sneaky user-tracking thing.
   (Allow cakelisting for users who really want
   "post this link to example.com" buttons, or who
   want to participate in comment threads.

 * Block Flash objects by default, but allow
   cakelisting for sites such as YouTube that still
   depend on this.

 * Block third-party images in an easily
   user-configurable way.

 * Remove problem elements from web pages in an easily
   user-configurable way.

 * Rewrite search result pages to remove click
   tracking.

 * Rewrite search result pages to remove problem
   sites.

Unless I'm missing something, you have to install
three extensions (NoScript, AdBlock Plus, and
CustomizeGoogle or a successor) to get the core
functionality, and much of what the extensions do
seems to overlap.

usage note: since "whitelist" is potentially
problematic  ("You whitelisted me!  That's mighty
white of you!") I'm going with "cakelist".

-- 
Don Marti                    
http://zgp.org/~dmarti/
dmarti at zgp.org