Advanced Security oldschool's surfing laptop configuration

[oldschool]

Updated AVG Free to Hardened Mode | File & Behavior Shields only due to slow web surfing.

 

[piquiteco]

AVG Free now has a firewall?

 

[Pat MacKnife]

Yes a few months.

 

[ForgottenSeer 97327]

@oldschool,

Since you are using two cloud whitelists (SAC and AVG hardened), the risk of being infected by an executable is near zero IMO

The only addition you might want to consider is Hard_Configurator with the Avast hardened mode profile (similar to SWH for protection against scripted content) and additionally blocking the enhanced selection of sponsors (protection against LolBins).

Because you use SAC, you would use the H_C beta or wait for the updated H_C (reenabling SRP with SAC enabled). But think twice before you do: having a fort-knox hardened security is boring (not much left to tweak or optimize)

 

[SeriousHoax]

Switched µBO to Adguard in Chrome/Edge after the mention by @SeriousHoax.

Nice. I think I should clarify why I prefer Adguard on Chromium browsers.
Speed wise, Adguard and uBO both performs the same in my tests in terms of page loading, while uBO in Firefox is slightly faster. I retested yesterday.
Adguard is better at cosmetic filtering, and they fix any reported issues much quickly. Most of them within 24 hours while on EasyList I have months old unfixed issues. Some filters written in Adguard syntax are not supported by uBO. Adgaurd can block Facebook sponsored posts on Facebook, but most of the time can't do it in Firefox. I knew the reason behind it, but forgot.

 

[piquiteco]

Adguard is better at cosmetic filtering, and they fix any reported issues much quickly. Most of them within 24 hours while on EasyList I have months old unfixed issues. Some filters written in Adguard syntax are not supported by uBO. Adgaurd can block Facebook sponsored posts on Facebook, but most of the time can't do it in Firefox. I knew the reason behind it, but forgot.

Thanks! for the tip, I had noticed that in Adguard that the updates were more frequent than uBO. Thanks for sharing

 

[ForgottenSeer 97327]

uB0 was the fsstest, but since AdGuard developed CoreLibs, a cross platform filtering engine and a dedicated TSUrlFilter engine for more advanced content filtering, the performance is on par with uBlockOrigin.

When you use only AdGuard filters, AG probably beats uB0 in terms of performance (I could not measure difference any more, but AG used a little bit less, not much, CPU time than uB0).

That said: it was a miracle how a one man operation managed to beat larger development teams for such a long time (ghostery, disconnect, ABP, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi).

 

[Jan Willy]

Some filters written in Adguard syntax are not supported by uBO.

AG has developed filterlists especially for uBO. No need to switch to AG extension.

AdGuard Base filter + EasyList

https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/ublock/filters/2.txt

AdGuard Base filter + EasyList (Optimized)

https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/ublock/filters/2_optimized.txt

AdGuard Tracking Protection filter

https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/ublock/filters/3.txt

AdGuard Tracking Protection filter (Optimized)

https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/ublock/filters/3_optimized.txt

AdGuard Social Media filter

https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/ublock/filters/4.txt

AdGuard Social Media filter (Optimized)

https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/ublock/filters/4_optimized.txt

AdGuard Annoyances filter

https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/ublock/filters/14.txt

AdGuard Annoyances filter (Optimized)

https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/ublock/filters/14_optimized.txt

AdGuard DNS filter

https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/ublock/filters/15.txt

AdGuard DNS filter (Optimized)

https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/ublock/filters/15_optimized.txt

AdGuard URL Tracking filter

https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/ublock/filters/17.txt

AdGuard URL Tracking filter (Optimized)

https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/ublock/filters/17_optimized.txt

 

[SeriousHoax]

That said: it was a miracle how a one man operation managed to beat larger development teams for such a long time (ghostery, disconnect, ABP, Brave, Opera, Vivaldi).

Agree. Gorhill is a genius. Huge respect to him.

AG has developed filterlists especially for uBO. No need to switch to AG extension.

I'm aware of this. I was mainly talking about things like Adguard specific scriptlets which doesn't work in uBO. Adguard can auto click on cookie notices for us which is something Gorhill considers a security risk, so uBO will never have them according to him. Adguard also use things like these for other cosmetic filtering.
An example of cookie notice fix that uBO can't do.

r6fix.ubi.com · Issue #149122 · AdguardTeam/AdguardFilters

Prerequisites This site DOES NOT contain sexually explicit material, otherwise use NSFW-specific form; Filters were updated before reproducing an issue; AdGuard product version is up-to-date; Brows...

github.com

Here's one more made by Yuki for me which clicks on "continue reading" button on MSN articles. It's not possible with uBO.

msn.com#%#AG_onLoad(function(){if(window.location.href.includes("/en-xl/")){var g=new MutationObserver(function(){var b=document.querySelector('button[id^="continue-reading"]');b&&b.click();});g.observe(document,{childList:!0,subtree:!0});setTimeout(function(){g.disconnect()},1E4)}});

 

[oldschool]

Back to Windows Security only.

After uninstalling AVG Firewall, I uninstalled AVG completely because it completely borked Windows Security. Problems like this are a big "No no" for me.

 

[oldschool]

I think I should clarify why I prefer Adguard on Chromium browsers.

AG also has Stealth Mode, especially 'Hide referers', so it's 6 of one, 1/2 dozen of the other between AG and µBO.

 

[ForgottenSeer 97327]

Back to Windows Security only.

After uninstalling AVG Firewall, I uninstalled AVG completely because it completely borked Windows Security. Problems like this are a big "No no" for me.

What happened? No problem here (replaced Avast Free with AVG Free using all shields), because Avast Free will probably be moving to Avast One, I thought it made sense that new AVG Free is moving to Avast old free.

I noticed when you silence Avast, after an update of Avast, the ms Defender icon is missing. Allowing notifications once with a reboot solves the problem.

 

[oldschool]

I noticed when you silence Avast, after an update of Avast, the ms Defender icon is missing. Allowing notifications once with a reboot solves the problem.

I don't remember if I silenced alerts. I don't think so.

 

[oldschool]

Updated configuration to show added Firewall Hardening and Windows Spy Blocker rules, which were applied previously.

 

[oldschool]

NextDNS on my TV is using up the free query limit so I've switched to Quad9 on Windows and adjusted ad blocker filter lists accordingly.

 

[oldschool]

Changed DNS to https://security.cloudflare-dns.com/dns-query . I hadn't used it in a long time. It's much faster for me than Quad9 or NextDNS.

 

[Trident]

Changed DNS to https://security.cloudflare-dns.com/dns-query . I hadn't used it in a long time. It's much faster for me than Quad9 or NextDNS.

I’d love to be using Cloudflare but that leaves ads and trackers to be blocked locally which in most cases slows down browsing to a degree. So the speed up from the faster DNS is cancelled and you waste battery and cpu time as well. So I’ve settled for NextDNS… why can’t we just have it all ever…

 

[oldschool]

I’d love to be using Cloudflare but that leaves ads and trackers to be blocked locally which in most cases slows down browsing to a degree.

I use very few filter lists in µBO and Firefox is very fast.

 

[Trident]

I use very few filter lists in µBO and Firefox is very fast.

It is, on Windows it’s my favourite (on Mac unfortunately uBo had its development suspended). But still, it’s one task that will be done locally instead of on a DNS level… I’m a bit paranoid on performance

 

[oldschool]

I have a low-end turtle of a laptop that's good enough for me.