Disconnect 2: visualize and block third party code on websites
Disconnect 2 is a new version of Disconnect. a browser add-on for Firefox and Google Chrome that visualizes and blocks third party code that is executed on websites you visit. Third party code refers to scripts that are loaded on sites that make connections to third party sites. The extension divides these sources into advertising, analytics, social and content, and indicates the total number of these connections in its toolbar icon.
A click on the icon displays detailed information about the connections the site tried to establish. The color green indicates that a connection attempt has been blocked, and it is up to you to allow some or none of the connections from being made. You can click on any group here to see the list of connections that the site tried to make, again with options to allow some or all of the connections in a particular category.
A click on a server listed here opens the website of the server in the browser. The extension furthermore blocks scripts of the three popular social networking and messaging sites Facebook, Google and Twitter. You can allow connections with a single click which turns the green icon into a gray one indicating that connections are allowed. A different color scheme, red for blocked connections, green for allowed and gray for unknown connections would make more sense in my opinion.
The extension highlights the time saved to load the website, the bandwidth saved and the requests secured at the bottom of its screen. Just move the mouse cursor over any bar to see the improvement in percentage or total numbers.
You can whitelist your favorite website so that none of its connection attempts will be blocked, and it appears that the extension is remembering previous settings as well so that you can also only enable select connections or scripts and not all of them. The visualize page feature is interesting as well.
You can change the view mode to a list instead which lists all the connections a site tried to make. Connections that were not made are shown are crossed out and shown in red so that you know exactly which connections have been made and which have not been made.
The developers have added several improvements in the new version. It now recognizes more than 2000 different third parties and not only major sites like the previous version did. It is also highlighting the benefit of using the extension now, and offers a more granular approach to blocking or allowing scripts to be loaded on a site. Disconnect 2 furthermore features a new Wi-Fi encrypt feature which forces https connections on select sites.
Note that some sites may not work at all or only partially if you do not enable some third party connections that it tries to make. Disconnect is not like NoScript, as it is only blocking major third parties from making connections and not all connections like NoScript does.
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Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.
When will you put an end to the mess in the comments?
Ghacks comments have been broken for too long. What article did you see this comment on? Reply below. If we get to 20 different articles we should all stop using the site in protest.
I posted this on [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/] so please reply if you see it on a different article.
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Comment redirected me to [https://www.ghacks.net/2012/08/04/add-search-the-internet-to-the-windows-start-menu/] which seems to be the ‘real’ article it is attached to
Article Title: Reddit enforces user activity tracking on site to push advertising revenue
Article URL: https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
No surprises here. This is just the beginning really. I cannot see a valid reason as to why anyone would continue to use the platform anymore when there are enough alternatives fill that void.
I’m not sure if there is a point in commenting given that comments seem to appear under random posts now, but I’ll try… this comment is for https://www.ghacks.net/2023/09/28/reddit-enforces-user-activity-tracking-on-site-to-push-advertising-revenue/
My temporary “solution”, if you can call it that, is to use a VPN (Mullvad in my case) to sign up for and access Reddit via a European connection. I’m doing that with pretty much everything now, at least until the rest of the world catches up with GDPR. I don’t think GDPR is a magical privacy solution but it’s at least a first step.