InformAction Forums

NoScript earns its bubblegum allowance merely for blocking all the countless scripts that want to get into my PC.
But there is a major obstacle - how do we know what a particular script DOES?
There is a severe problem with NoScript. Sometimes I get a long list of scripts to approve or not. ONE among them will make a video play at the site, or display those disgusting captchas, but WHICH ONE? I often end up permitting everything on the site I'm on. Which can easily defeat the purpose of NoScript.
We need you to provide information about what a given script will DO. Without it, we end up giving permission to many potentially bad scripts. I often check out scripts, but almost none of those places tells us what the script is going to do. Nor do I trust all the sites that provide safety evaluations. They unreliably rate safety, but never tell us the function.

When I go to a site, I'd like to know which scripts expressly pertain to that site. I can't even find that much out, and I often have to choose from among a hundred scripts. The bold typed ones aren't always necessary or even good.
I wouldn't want to be without NoScript, but it needs some serious additions.

You already got answer here - https://forums.informaction.com/viewtop ... 534#p90534

barbaz wrote:Unfortunately for us NoScript users, it is not technically possible to automatically determine which sites' scripts are required for what functionality.

You can use this method to narrow the list down - https://forums.informaction.com/viewtop ... 314#p75314

faster wrote:There is a severe problem with NoScript. Sometimes I get a long list of scripts to approve or not. ONE among them will make a video play at the site, or display those disgusting captchas, but WHICH ONE?...........We need you to provide information about what a given script will DO.

It would be impossible to parse and explain in some condensed form what each script will do. Basically, you learn over time, and get better and better at knowing what scripts are likely to be needed to get the functionality you desire. One simple example is taking the site name and doing a search on it. I have built up my untrusted list doing this. Since these untrusted sites are used by many many other sites, it keeps pairing down the number of scripts you see in the list to allow/disallow. To get a video to play, some are obvious like jwplayer scripts. A lot of sites that use captchas unfortunately use google, but sometimes that's what it takes. It's really a matter of time and patience - and as you know, NS is worth it.

If you should ever happen to devise a method of efficiently and comprehensively analysing the behavior of an arbitrary piece of code, please ensure that you write up a full thesis on it, because its value to computing science would be incalculable.

Of course, you may need to solve the halting problem to do it.

Otherwise, being told "Publisher X sent this code. Do you trust this publisher?" is about the best a tool can do for you, and that's as much as code signing for regular software gives you.