You can block WebRTC from leaking your IP now in uBlock Origin
Ublock is without doubt a popular extension for Firefox and Chrome that blocks network requests and popups, and modifies DOM requests on sites you visit to block advertisement, malicious content and other -- often -- undesirable content on the web.
While there is some confusion involved when it comes to picking the right release, there is uBlock and uBlock Origin for instance, it is clear that the two extensions are not identical.
I prefer uBlock Origin as it gives per-site controls which uBlock does not anymore. It seems as well that development is progressing at a faster pace when it comes to new releases.
If you have installed the most recent developer build of uBlock Origin which was released a couple of hours ago, you may have noticed a new privacy feature that Gorhill, the lead developer of the project, added to the extension.
You find the following three privacy settings listed under the main settings tab in the uBlock Origin options (which you access with a right-click on the icon and the selection of options).
- Disable pre-fetching (to prevent any connection for blocked network requests).
- Disable hyperlink auditing/beacon.
- Prevent WebRTC from leaking local IP address
The new setting provides you with a toggle to enable or disable WebRTC from leaking your local IP address.
Please note that it won't prevent the leaking of your public IP address (which other Chrome extensions referenced here support).
Once you enable the preference in uBlock Origin you will notice that only the public IP is displayed on this test site.
The latest version is only available as a developer release. This means that it is not available yet on the Chrome and Firefox add-on stores. While you can install it, it is slightly more difficult if you are using a Chrome-based browsers.
- Download the Chromium zip package on the uBlock Origin releases page and extract it to a directory on your computer.
- Open chrome://extensions/ in the web browser and check the "developer mode" box at the top.
- Click on "load unpacked extension", browse to the directory you unpacked the extension to and select it.
- This runs the installation process to install uBlock Origin in Chrome.
Firefox users can install the xpi file directly in the browser. This may change for Stable and Beta users when version 40/41 of the web browser hits those channels due to the introduction of mandatory add-on signing.
It is unclear when the dev build will be pushed to the release channel.
Closing Words
The introduction of privacy-related settings and features in uBlock Origin make sense as they relate closely to the overall nature and purpose of the extension.
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.