Proposed addition to "SOME SITES YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO ALLOW

[barbaz]

I have often recommended that people use Adblock Plus subscriptions as reference for constructing their NoScript blacklist. It's been really helpful for me and it's a method easily tailored to individual users' desires. As such I think that method should be mentioned in the "SOME SITES YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO ALLOW" sticky. (Plus a description of that method won't require updating as much as the sticky itself as it is, which is over 2 years outdated.)

atm I'm thinking maybe the best way to go about this would be to grab viewtopic.php?p=71872#p71872 and repurpose its contents into a reply to the sticky. I'd need to clarify it a bit and give some better background on the method and Adblock Plus filter syntax, but I think it's doable.

(Note that installation of Adblock Plus isn't even required for this method, just that it's more convenient than manually downloading the large .txt file(s) and possibly manually re-downloading them every so often.)

My concern is that this might make that sticky confusing to users...

Thoughts on whether that's even a good idea?
Should this proposed post even replace the current sticky due to lack of maintenance, or does that info change so little that it's all still relevant? (I'm not comfortable trying to maintain/update the sticky, I'm just too likely to screw that up especially given that I'd have to edit several copies of it in identical ways.)

If people like this idea I'll post a draft in this thread before adding it, to make sure that what eventually goes in the sticky doesn't confuse users.

[barbaz]

bump

[Thrawn]

atm I'm thinking maybe the best way to go about this would be to grab viewtopic.php?p=71872#p71872 and repurpose its contents into a reply to the sticky. I'd need to clarify it a bit and give some better background on the method and Adblock Plus filter syntax, but I think it's doable.

Feel free. I'd agree that ABP filters are likely a good starting point for populating a blacklist (though for myself, I don't normally bother; I just block them as they come).

Should this proposed post even replace the current sticky due to lack of maintenance, or does that info change so little that it's all still relevant?

Well, I'm sure it changes in the sense that there would be more added all the time. If you have a way to add more, go ahead.

[barbaz]

Feel free. I'd agree that ABP filters are likely a good starting point for populating a blacklist

Cool, thanks Thrawn. Here's the proposed draft post:

A more customizable way to populate your NoScript blacklist is to use Adblock Plus filterlists - it has the advantage that different users can select different sets of blacklists based on what they personally don't want.
Here is a step-by-step guide for how to use ABP to help you populate your NoScript blacklist:

1) Install Adblock Plus if you don't already have it
2) Add subscriptions to block every type of content you don't want. A good selection is available here. Note that if you add too many subscriptions/filters, you can get a performance hit on your browser, especially at startup.
3) Visit a site that tries to call scripts from domains you aren't sure about.
4) Go to ABP menu -> Filter Preferences. If you don't see two columns, right-click a filter subscription and select "Show/hide filters". Once you see two columns, in the Filter Preferences window click Find then start typing one of the domains you're unsure about. If you see the domain explicitly blocked, meaning you find a filter along any of these patterns:

Code: Select all

||site.com^$third-party
||site.com^
://site.com^
://site.com/*
/site.com/*

go to NoScript menu -> Untrusted -> Mark (site) as Untrusted, because either that domain is not needed and is something you definitely don't want, or you won't need to allow it in any case thanks to surrogate scripts. (A list of sites for which NoScript has built-in surrogate scripts, as well as more information about surrogates, is available here.)
If it's not found, and if you don't happen to find any similar-looking or related domain in the process; or if you only find patterns like these:

Code: Select all

||site.com^$object-subrequest
||site.com/some/specific/path/*
/site.com/*$script,image
site.com###foofoofoofoofoo
subdomain.site.com#@#.FOOFOOFOO
@@||site.com^$domain=

which don't blacklist an entire domain (in fact, the last two would actually be whitelists) - it *might* be an OK domain, leave it alone for later trial-and-error.

If you want to know more about the Adblock Plus filter syntax, and why each pattern above is categorized the way it is, see https://adblockplus.org/en/filters.

Happy Blacklisting.

Comments/suggestions?

[Thrawn]

Sounds fine. It might be good to include something like this when people ask about how to tell whether a site is safe.

[barbaz]

Thanks for the feedback.
The post is now at viewtopic.php?p=75314#p75314

It might be good to include something like this when people ask about how to tell whether a site is safe.

I'm not understanding this comment, sorry.
Are you suggesting to offer a link to that post in reply to people who ask about how to determine whether a site is safe?

[Thrawn]

Are you suggesting to offer a link to that post in reply to people who ask about how to determine whether a site is safe?

Something along those lines, yes. Along with the Site Info feature, you can check whether a site is on ABP blacklists.