New Update JShelter - JavaScript Restrictor

[LinuxFan58]

@Sampei.Nihira

IMO that needs a bit of nuancing. In Chromium based browsers (made by an advertising company) and most other browsers (due to Google's dominant influence in the W3C, which determines global web standards) it is not possible to rule out all tracking methods.

Extensions can't filter out all possible tracking options and even when they would correlation intelligence (using several data points) can predict returning customers based on interest behavioral targetting.

On the plus side to much fingerprinting makes websites slow(er), which will cost them points in the SERP position calculation. Lower search ranking means a company has to pay more for adds with high ranking to Google.

So there is a business optimum for user tracking.

@simmerskool
I am on a multi day music festival and be back on tuesday. I will play with JShelter tuesday evening and configure a lighter than default setting (which you could try on problematic websites). You are using Firefox when I recall correctly?

For all members using JShelter
For all websites you login to, you give them you id, so you are always tracked and it is better to disable JShelter for these websites.

Chromium browsers have a neat feature to disable extension per website (you need to enable a flag to get the advanced extension menu).

The design idea of JShelter is to protect you against unwanted tracking (trying to balance useability and protection against most common tracking).

 

[Sampei.Nihira]

@LinuxFan58

In the past, when I used JS, I encountered issues on some websites, and even adding the website to the exceptions list didn't resolve the incompatibilities.
Another issue with JS that can be observed in Firefox is that you have to leave a number of settings (WebRTC, WebGL, etc.) at their default values to achieve the same results as @Kongo
So the benefit is lost if the extension is disabled, even temporarily......

Enjoy the festival.

 

[LinuxFan58]

@simmerskool

I assumed you got uBlockOrigin installed (otherwise enable beacon protection). When you have hardened your browser profile for something, disable the corresponsing protection (e.g. rendered image protection). Reversely you can also run with all protections disabled and keep the fingerprint detector enabled to get warnings when a website tries to fingerprint you and enable the protection to recommended. The JShelter protection interferes with page processing and rendering and causes some delay. You normally don't need the overhead for most websites, so it is also a good tactic to run with protection OFF and only Fingerprint Detector enabled (and switch on protection for websites trying to track you). For this purpose you could use STRICT but besure to losen up XMLHttpRequest protection (disable), Webworker API (low) and WebAssembly Speedup (disable).

 

[Victor M]

sorry if this has already been answered. But has this thing stopped any DriveByDownloads or stopped any InfoStealers ? Nice logo, nice name.
how does it compare to NoScript ?

All the home page talks about is fingerprinting.

 

[LinuxFan58]

sorry if this has already been answered. But has this thing stopped any DriveByDownloads or stopped any InfoStealers ? Nice logo, nice name.
how does it compare to NoScript ?

As far as I know it does not.

The author of NoScript works on this sponsored project and has reworked the underlying code of NoScript (NS recently added websassembly protection for instance) to comply with Mv3 working on this project. They overlap on some protections (XMLHttpRequests, Webassembly), but have completely different design purposes and scope.

Although I like the idea of NoShelter and have used it for a few months (shifted from default, to lite mode to only fingerprint warning) and noted that only one website (Ikea) I had used in those months, did use excessive tracking (but when you want to buy something you have to login and you are tracked anyway). That is why I decided to deinstall this extension.

But mileage may vary, depending on your browsing habits (so I am not advicing to not use JShelter, just posting that it was not worth the overhead with my surfing habits)

 

[Zero Knowledge]

I've always found these extensions hit or miss, the open web is basically useless without javascript. And when you block it your going to be identified as a bot.

uMatrix/NoScript/JShelter are all great tools but yeah probably not worth it. Adblocker though still is until they neuter it completely in the future.

 

[oldschool]

I've always found these extensions hit or miss, the open web is basically useless without javascript. And when you block it your going to be identified as a bot.

uMatrix/NoScript/JShelter are all great tools but yeah probably not worth it.

I've reached the same conclusion. Much of what users attempt to implement in the way of privacy is simply privacy theater.

Stay safe, not paranoid!