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When I'm browsing the web, I'd like to not be tracked by any third party services like Facebook or Google. For instance, if I visit somepage.com I don't want my browser requesting things from facebook.com unless I allow it. However, if I visit facebook.com, Facebook still works.

Does anyone know of a Chrome or Firefox extension that will allow me to do this?

AdBlock in Chrome doesn't seem to work because it just hides the web page elements, it doesn't stop the browser from downloading them. I imagine that some kind of proxy/browser extension hybrid would be the best.

Any suggestions? Thank you.

5 Answers 5

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The add-on No Script probably does what you want. I appreciate that I have to explicitly allow those scripts/domains that are needed for a page and can easily keep other certain scripts/domains from ever firing. It's also very nice that you can temporarily allow a domain so that you can see if it really is vital for the page/site to function.

Which reminds me: I really need to donate.

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I just discovered a program called "Ghostery" that allows you to view/prevent third-party sites that track you, maybe it can help you out. It has plug-ins for all the major web browsers:

http://www.ghostery.com/

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I would caution you against doing this. While you may think that this will solve snooping and cross site request forgery, it will only cause more problems. A lot of websites have a separate domain such as paypal.com I think has staticpaypal.com which is responsible for loading all of the static content like images, video, scripts, etc.

You will notice that this causes a lot of trouble if you were using Noscript. There's a ton of times where I go to a webpage and have to allow some third party webpage to load javascript (and other items) for the page to function or even render properly.

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    Thanks for your response. I would allow requests to staticpaypal.com when I'm visiting paypal.com. I realize it would be somewhat painful to have to do this the first time I visit a page, but I wouldn't mind. May 28, 2010 at 17:09
  • That was just an example which I thought off the top of my head. It's annoying when I have to do it with Noscript, and I assume that there isn't an extension which can block all third party content like noscript. So you would probably need to edit some config file by hand. Really your best bet is to just get noscript and adblock, disable third party cookies, and dump cookies/cache at the end of the browser session. Beyond that it's a REAL hassle. If you need more privacy I would recommend using a proxy service.
    – Daisetsu
    May 28, 2010 at 17:17
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    As far as manually allowing requests to 3rd party sites, it seems this would get tedious each time you have to load a website and determine what 3rd party sites to allow or not allow. May 28, 2010 at 18:07
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The add-on RequestPolicy does what you're asking for, allowing both temporary and permanent white-listing.

Mozilla Addons - RequestPolicy

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  • It's supposed to anyways. It works in conjunction with other tools like NoScript. Aug 16, 2016 at 2:07
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Recently I've made a program exactly for this aim. It utilizes host-rules parameter of chromium based browsers to launch a whitelisted browser session where only your allowed domains and IPs can be contacted . Additionally it runs browser in incognito mode as default and disables all extensions too. In this way browser loses memory burdens of extensions as a bonus. Its a very simple program, i use it daily and feel peace of mind. you can check at sourceforge, its named BrowseWell.

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