[conspire] NoScript

[Ehud Kaldor]

I would add to Paul's statements that it also gives me a list of all the
3rd parties called into the party (pun intended) whenever I go to a site.
Just knowing it, even if I end up whitelisting all, is good knowledge of
what types of functionality a web site is pulling in.


On Thu, Sep 20, 2018 at 1:37 PM Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:

> Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):
>
> > Someone, not on the CABAL list, asked why I use No Script and didn't
> > it limit my access to some fancy websites.  Below is my reply.  Did I
> > get this reasonably correct?
> >
> >
> > More and more websites use javascript.  Also many of those scripts
> > link to other websites.
> >
> > Loading other websites means more web traffic.  It takes time to
> > establish the links.  What is the benefit to me to load facebook or
> > googlesyndication?
> >
> >
> > Javascripts take up CPU cycles on my computer.  Using my resources to
> > serve up ads I am not interested in.  After I have bought something on
> > line, why do I want to see ads for the same stuff?
> >
> > Last, and most important, once a script is running on my computer,
> > there are too many ways the bad actors can do things I don't want.
>
> Sounds about right to me (alhough one could detail some of the many bad
> actions by those bad actors to which you allude).  I'd even shorten it
> to:  'Because I want my Web browser to do what *I* ask, not what a bunch
> of spooks and criminals want it to do.'
>
>
> Javascript has turned out to be the keystone technology that drives
> not just dynamic Web sites but just about all of the more-nefarious uses
> of the Web (keystone in the sense that it's glue code making other
> pieces of badness able to communicate and function), something possible
> because it is grossly overfeatured and by default has an appalling lack
> of security and privacy safeguards.  The major browser manufacturers
> have no incentive to fix that problem, in part because their priorities
> are influenced by money they get from targeted advertising and other
> shady industries that rely on data-mining and spying on users.  So, the
> lazy assumption that 'If this were dangerous and ripe for abuse, the
> browser coders would have done something about it' turns out to be
> grossly mistaken.
>
> A depressing number of people using the Web utterly fail to face the
> classic questions 'Who's the customer?  What's the product?  What pays
> for the costs of these things?'  So, they resist the notion that major
> Web browser companies aren't strongly (or, frankly, at all) motivated to
> look after their personal interests.  They somehow think they're the
> customers, even though they never paid a nickel.
>
> E.g., I kept hearing Linux and other computer users expressing outrage
> and incomprehension that Mozilla, Inc. keeps cutting the funding behind
> the Thunderbird mail program, and moving to EOL the project.  I ask
> them:  What's Mozilla's revenue model for Thunderbird?  And, by
> contrast, what's its revenue model for Firefox?  Often, they can't get
> their minds around the contrast, or indeed what the issue is, at all.
>
> tl;dr:  Gross intellectual laziness to the point of failure to grasp
> self-interest remains a thing.
>
>
>
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