[tor-talk] Adblock for everyone

[Andrew Lewman]

On Sun, 6 Oct 2013 05:18:18 -0400 (EDT)
Alice Anderson <foxacidproblem at aol.com> wrote:

> Why you have HTTPSEverywhere and Noscript by default but not
> Adblockplus on TBB package? it really helps and blcok major tracking
> companies like Google Facebook ... Tor is not perfect, as almost all
> web pages have inserted at least one of these trackers on their
> page's source, one mistake is enough to compromise our privacy.
> Adblock solve this problem by just blocking these third parties.
> another danger of these third parties is FoxAcid codes! Facebook
> button is the best place for FoxAcid calls. please insert adblock by
> default on TBB package, if not explain why?

Adblock whitelists certain advertising companies and ads themselves:

See https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads and
http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2280451/Google-Paying-to-Have-Ads-Whitelisted-on-AdBlock-Plus

See #5 under
https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser/design/#philosophy

"No filters

Site-specific or filter-based addons such as AdBlock Plus, Request
Policy, Ghostery, Priv3, and Sharemenot are to be avoided. We believe
that these addons do not add any real privacy to a proper
implementation of the above privacy requirements, and that development
efforts should be focused on general solutions that prevent tracking by
all third parties, rather than a list of specific URLs or hosts.

Filter-based addons can also introduce strange breakage and cause
usability nightmares, and will also fail to do their job if an
adversary simply registers a new domain or creates a new url path.
Worse still, the unique filter sets that each user creates or installs
will provide a wealth of fingerprinting targets.

As a general matter, we are also generally opposed to shipping an
always-on Ad blocker with Tor Browser. We feel that this would damage
our credibility in terms of demonstrating that we are providing privacy
through a sound design alone, as well as damage the acceptance of Tor
users by sites that support themselves through advertising revenue.

Users are free to install these addons if they wish, but doing so is
not recommended, as it will alter the browser request fingerprint. "


-- 
Andrew
http://tpo.is/contact
pgp 0x6B4D6475