Advice Request Is uBlock Origin with AdGuard filters + ClearUrls as good as AdGuard?

[JasonUK]

Okay I'm officially driving myself nuts

I've been through a phase of combining uBlock Origin+Privacy Badger+HTTPS Everywhere+Decentraleyes+ClearUrls but reading through the numerous threads, the changes to PB, question marks over whether Decentraleyes adds anything and switching to Brave (I also use Firefox) led me to question whether less would in fact be more!

For Brave I've ditched all the extensions listed above as it has HTTPS & a decent adblocker inbuilt only adding AdGuard with stealth filters to the mix which blocks a surprising number of items even with Brave in 'aggressive' mode ~ uBlock Origin with default settings by contrast blocked nothing on Brave. My only niggle is that it's difficult to see exactly whats being blocked with AdGuard and uBlock is far easier to customise for a specific website, in short I like AdGuard's apparent performance but with uBlocks UI!

My question is whether uBlock Origin, perhaps with ClearUrls, can match AdGuard by applying AdGuard's filters in uBlocks' filter list? Would they produce comparable performance with uBlocks better interface? I don't use AdGuard's phishing protection but is there anything else I'd be missing that's important? The AdGuard filters on uBlock say they're 'out of date' too which is another question mark.

Any input/insight would be appreciated.

 

[Jan Willy]

My only niggle is that it's difficult to see exactly whats being blocked with AdGuard

Just open the filtering log and refresh the site.

 

[oldschool]

@JasonUK I use ClearURLs and LocalCDN in Brave. The latter in Chromium tends to be good on shopping sites and some 3rd rate news sites, etc, plus it has more features than Decentraleyes. Both of these extensions actually work better on Firefox. ClearURLs is being totally overhauled and I'm hoping it improves its Chromium performance, e.g. ETag filtering, etc. And remember, Brave has some link cleaning features built-in + referrer protection.

 

[JasonUK]

Thanks for your comments/suggestions.

I solved the 'out of date' filter issue by hitting the 'update' button.. doh!

I'll try uBlock Origin+AdGuard filters plus ClearUrl & Decentraleyes in Firefox for now. I'll read up on LocalCDN.

 

[Tutman]

Speaking of this, has anyone seen this latest test?



Testing Adguard extension and also comparing the ad blocking feature vs Ublock Origin.

 

[Nightwalker]

Speaking of this, has anyone seen this latest test?



Testing Adguard extension and also comparing the ad blocking feature vs Ublock Origin.

The adblock comparison against uBlock Origin is totally nonsense, he was testing the two extensions working together, it will obviously impact in the results and it is hard to compare the numbers reported directly.

About the phishing/malware, it is meaningless too, those results are highly depending of the source of the URLs and its "freshness", it is just a "entertaining" video I guess.

 

[Tutman]

But which is better? Ublock doesn't seem to have malicious warning for sites like Adguard I guess unless you use Adguard filters on Ublock or just use Adguard?!

 

[Nightwalker]

But which is better? Ublock doesn't seem to have malicious warning for sites like Adguard I guess unless you use Adguard filters on Ublock or just use Adguard?!

AdGuard should be better because its malware filters are updated more often (real-time?) while uBlock depends on more static filters lists (you have many lists options there, but they arent that efficient).

Phishing and malware protection | AdGuard Knowledge Base

Falling prey to phishing and malware remains a common issue. To enhance digital security, we’ve incorporated special filters in AdGuard products to shield you from malicious and phishing websites. To date, we’ve categorized over 15 million sites and built a database of 1.5 million websites known...

kb.adguard.com

 

[ng4ever]

To me AdGuard is better, even though it slows down upload speed on fiber connections, because it is updated all the time. Plus is not going anywhere for long.

Now good things never last forever.

I still miss Ad Muncher.

 

[Tutman]

To me AdGuard is better, even though it slows down upload speed on fiber connections, because it is updated all the time. Plus is not going anywhere for long.

Now good things never last forever.

I still miss Ad Muncher.

Yea RIP Ad Muncher.

 

[SeriousHoax]

But which is better? Ublock doesn't seem to have malicious warning for sites like Adguard I guess unless you use Adguard filters on Ublock or just use Adguard?!

According to some benchmarks, uBlock Origin is faster and also use less memory. Using the malware protection filter may slow down page loading a bit. Don't need to use the malware protection option if you're using a third party AV with good web protection. Another way to use Adguard's malware protection filter is to use Adguard DNS.
Both are very good with some extra features not available in the other one. Use the one you're more comfortable with.

 

[Lenny_Fox]

I don't know whether Adblock, uBlockOrigin and AdGuard are able to process the advanced rules features of each other. When looking at their documentation their scope seem to differ (meaning uBO might offer an advanced feature AG does not have) and the syntax of the advanced features which do perfrom simular functions seems to be slightly different, see the examples in this post Q&A - Which block lists do you use with UBO, AG and ABP ? | MalwareTips Community

So my best guess would be NO

 

[Jan Willy]

Another way to use Adguard's malware protection filter is to use Adguard DNS.

AFAIK Adguard DNS doesn't include special anti malware and anti phishing filters. A review on the site How good are public DNS providers in blocking malware & phishing? – Skadligkod.se seems this to confirm. At least you can't expect great malware protection from Adguard DNS.

 

[Gandalf_The_Grey]

AFAIK Adguard DNS doesn't include special anti malware and anti phishing filters. A review on the site How good are public DNS providers in blocking malware & phishing? – Skadligkod.se seems this to confirm. At least you can't expect great malware protection from Adguard DNS.

A later test from that site:

Malicious site filters on DNS in 2020 – Skadligkod.se

Vedicts
Starting with the newcomer Cloudflare families, I’m not impressed by it’s results. Non of the domains connected to phishing links where blocked. When it comes to malware links, here at least 25% of the domains where blocked.

Quad9, CleanBrowsing and OpenDNS are very good in blocking phishing links (100 – 92%).

On the malware blocking test, CleanBrowsing did still block 50% of the tested doamins.

Sadly, OpenDNS did not block any malware domain tested, having a high score on blocking Phishing they also need to improve their filtering of malware domains.

AdGuard DNS on the other hand has rather equal results in blocking Phishing and Malware domains (42 % / 67 %). Using Adguard would also give you the advantage of blocked advertisement in your browsing traffic.

The total winner of this test is Quad9. Blocking 96% of everything I tested in this review. All 12 phishing domains where block and only one malware domain did it let go through. Very impressive results!

I was first thinking about giving Cloudflare families a try to be my main DNS service. But I was expecting much better results from Cloudflare, a company having a huge Content Delivery Network around the world as they have. But after my review it’s clear for me, to continue using Quad9 as my DNS service on all devices as I have done for about two years now.

 

[SeriousHoax]

AFAIK Adguard DNS doesn't include special anti malware and anti phishing filters. A review on the site How good are public DNS providers in blocking malware & phishing? – Skadligkod.se seems this to confirm. At least you can't expect great malware protection from Adguard DNS.

Right. What I mean is, Adguard DNS can be an alternative to the malware protection feature Adguard browser extension/Adguard desktop offers.