Ad blocking for the masses, part one: uBlock Origin

Ad blocking for the masses, part one: uBlock Origin
The year 2015 may someday be remembered as when web-based ad blocking went mainstream.

The year 2015 may someday be remembered as when web-based ad blocking went mainstream. So in an effort to cover the latest developments, we’ll take a look at state-of-the-art ad blocking in a three-part series of posts. First, let’s take a look at the browser add-on that inspired this concept: uBlock Origin.

uBlock Origin is an highly configurable browser extension that blocks third party advertising, trackers, and malware sites. You will find that most sites render noticeable faster with ads and trackers turned off. And, in some cases, web pages that were not rendering at all previous will look great with all the offending components blocked.

It does this by using well maintained filter lists including EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Peter Lowe’s Ad server list, and Malware Domain list. You can also choose to add other third party filters by choosing them from the “3rd-party filters” list in its settings page. You can see what the uBlock Origin is doing with a specific web page by viewing its dynamic log.

Turning off filtering for a website is as simple as clicking on the big blue button in uBlock Origin’s pull down window. And, you can permanently unblock a site by adding it to a Whitelist that can be edited right in the browser.

If you want to reverse the way uBlock Origin works, take a look at its Dynamic filtering: turn off uBlock everywhere excepthow-to page. This whitelists all websites and lets you choose which sites will have its ads blocked. I plan to whitelist sites one-at-a-time, though.

If you want to micro-tweak the add-on, take a look at its Advanced user features information. But, as its author says, “Enable at your own risk.”

uBlock Origin is a fast, lightweight, and free add-on that works in some of the most popular desktop browsers in use today (with the exception of Microsoft’s Explorer and Edge browsers). It doesn’t require any technical skill to install or use. And, for those with some technical knowledge, it is highly configurable. And, most importantly for me, it lets me whitelist sites I want to support while blocking some of those one-off web page visits based on links from Google News, Twitter, and Facebook.

You can find the add-ons for Chrome, Firefox, and Opera using the links below. While the version for Opera is named uBlock, its author is listed as “gorhill” (Raymond Hill) and has an update date that is in line with the other versions. Note that uBlock Origin was removed from Google’s Chrome Store earlier this year (Ref: ghacks.net), so we should all be grateful that Google reversed its decision. You can find uBlock Origin in Chrome add-on, Firefox, and Operaversions.

In part two of this series, we’ll take a look at the recently released AdBlock Browser for Android and iOS. And, in part three, we’ll investigate Apple’s new facility for content-blocking Safari extensions in iOS 9 for the iPhone and iPad.