EasyList Forum

Interesting things have been happening at uBlock (ublock.org) for the past few months, the project that was handed over Aljoudi (not uBlock Origin/uBO). The project's admin was changed on GitHub from Chris to an account named "uBlockAdmin" in March, which for all intents and purposes seems to just be Chris. With almost no activity for the past 3 years on the project the new account has been publishing new commits but ones which don't actually fix anything.

Though one of these commits added in April, which was noticed only a month later, has intoduced functionality to track users: https://github.com/uBlockAdmin/uBlock/c ... f56ca65539

For a project that was already a lost cause this seems to be even more of a reason to stay away from it. Looks, like the donation money is still rolling though.

Source: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=18/05/17/028245
H/T: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/8k4fu7/privacy_tool_ublock_not_ublock_origin_adds_user/

To quote gorhill -- "Just see the other "uBlock" as a scammy version, just like many others found in the Chrome store with "uBlock" in their name." I will just leave it at that.

intense wrote: ↑Mon Jun 11, 2018 2:13 pm https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets ... 6bac28c41d

Well that seems about right. Not sure how many people its going to help since many will go to it while looking to install uBO, still good though.

@intense
This blocking is no legitimate and exaggerated.
Many others adblockers track their users , for what not add ghostery to the badware list?

It's not for tracking, it's for frauding people.

For me it's a competition problem. As a maintainer, we must leave our feeling aside.
If this addon harm the user computer, the more appropriate is to report it to mozilla or google chrome.

since many will go to it while looking to install uBO

Googling uBlock and the very first result is the Extension/Addon from gorhill, not to mention, uBO's preview wiki page from wikipedia, that's more than enough to let newbies know what's what.

smed79 wrote:This blocking is no legitimate and exaggerated.
Many others adblockers track their users , for what not add ghostery to the badware list?

Now that I think about it Med seems to be right. Indeed uBO is technically a fork of uBlock and there seems to be no particular reason to block its website; @gorhill should probably weigh in here.

-Mark- wrote:Googling uBlock and the very first result is ...

Googling "adblock" show me as a result "Adblock Plus". Do I have to block adblockplus.org ?

I'll try again. It's all about frauding - asking donations for an obsolete extension - people. What competition ? Are you serious @smed79 insisting with this stupid discussion ? (here and in uBo repository)

I just express my opinion here. Thank you for the respect.

@smed79 Where did I say anything about blocking adblockplus.org or any other domain for that matter ? I think you mistakenly quoted my reply.

All right, it's no big deal. We may differ in our perspective on many issues but i am sure that our focus is to help each in their own manner.

Peace

I have no problem with blocking uBlock's scammy site. Most people refer to uBO as "uBlock" thinking ublock.org is associated with uBO. Want to take a guess what will happen if they want to contribute money to the project? I'm pretty sure that's how they're getting their funds, and for what exactly? No features have been added in 3 years just user tracking. Definition of a scam if you ask me.

Ghostery doesn't take on a name of a different project. I admit I haven't looked lately I do believe they still solicit donations but there's no mistaken identity with ghostery people know where they're donating money and what for exactly.

Sorry @smed79 I'll have to disagree.

@intense I just noticed that the the site had been added to the "badware risks" list. In that case I agree that "ublock.org" will fit the scope of the list to be added to it.

@Lanik You'd think after all these years that Chris would either abandon uBlock or at least be half decent and incorporate uBO's latest fixes but yet here we are. I wonder why it took so long for someone to point out that tracking had been added.

I think part of the reason has to do with the irrelevancy of the old project. Most people savvy enough to Google would have stumbled on the WikiPedia and forums and other 100s of places where you'd find descriptions of the 2 projects and how useless the old project by Chris has become. Sadly that only makes up ~20% of most online users. Everyone else is eager to part with their money and don't know the difference. Which is why the site ended up on the "badware risks" list. This reminds me of typo squatting craze some years ago where folks were going crazy with all kinds of misspellings of popular products/services/companies and hoping someone would "donate" to their cause.

For those who are still skeptical, would you put a typo squatting company on the badware list? I would. How's ublock.org any different?

Bought out by Adblock - https://www.ublock.org/announcement/

I just saw this on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/uBlockOrigin/c ... quired_by/

I don't know how I missed that but I'm actually glad that the guys over at Adblock bought Chris out.

Keep up the good work. They're quite active on this forum too.

Interesting. Well looks like someone is trying to capitalize on the uBlock name. Not sure how I feel about this, AdBlock (getadblock.com) seems to have been lagging behind in recent times and most of the original team has left (Michael Gundlach, Gabriel Cubbage) not to mention that if ublock.org picks up steam it will only create further confusion among users about the actual project.

If the AdBlock guys are real about this they should either change ublock.org's name or hand it over to uBO.

Adblock team is proof both projects can co-exist as long as they respect user privacy.

Adblock itself was bought few years ago by some mysterious buyer, so respecting user privacy is the last thing they will do.
https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/2/9441319/adblock-acquisition-unknown-buyer

or hand it over to uBO.

hahaha, I doubt gorhill would touch that thing even with a 10 ft pole now.

-Mark- wrote: ↑Mon Jul 02, 2018 7:52 am Adblock itself was bought few years ago by some mysterious buyer, so respecting user privacy is the last thing they will do.
https://www.theverge.com/2015/10/2/9441319/adblock-acquisition-unknown-buyer

One of the reasons I won't touch AdBlock with a 10 ft pole.

lol, I won't touch it with any amount of ft pole, as soon as it was bought they introduced Acceptable Ads, and I suppose they will do the same for uBlock too, now that they have already added tracking.