Manifest V3, webRequest, and ad blockers

Pathduck

@barbudo2005 From the article:
"As a personal user, I hereby swear to uninstall Chrome the day ad blockers are removed."
""If or when Chrome kills this extension, I will move to Firefox and never return,""

LOL @ the stubborn persisence of Chrome users. Why haven't they done this like, years ago
Why not do it right now

Granite1

Could this also be an opportunity to improve Vivaldi's ad/tracker blocker?
The thing does not strip out the most basic tracker, the utm suffix in the address box. Example: open any RT.com page.
To me, the fact that this is not tackled by Vivaldi make me doubt its overall ad/tracker blocking efficacy.

To promote it as a good ad/tracker blocker is misleading, to put it mildly. If you want to compete in that field with a really good OOTB ad/tracker blocking browser, Brave, you need to do something to Vivaldi's tool.

Don't get me wrong, I love Vivaldi, and I will keep using with extensions Adguard and ClearURLs as far as this issue is concerned.

Catweazle

@Granite1, the RT.com page in my Vivaldi, I use only the inbuild blocker

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Thot

@Catweazle said in Manifest V3, webRequest, and ad blockers:

the RT.com page in my Vivaldi, I use only the inbuild blocker

I didn't saw the warning. I can open the Site. Opened it in Private Window. Took a bit longer than usual, in the first place, with a white page in the beginning, but then opened. Inbuild Ad- and Trackerblockers enabled.

DoctorG

@Granite1 said in Manifest V3, webRequest, and ad blockers:

Example: open any RT.com page.

Blocked in some countries by internet providers.

Granite1

@DoctorG That is irrelevant, RT.com is just an example, but if you use a VPN that bypasses the block you'll see what I mean.

Anyway, there are other sites that use those suffixes.

DoctorG

@Catweazle rtcom has valid certificates, see
https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=rt.com&latest
https://www.immuniweb.com/ssl/rt.com/adrfZrvn/

Granite1

@Catweazle My take on that is that RT is blocked where you are. If you use a VPN you'll see what I mean. There are other sites that use the utm suffix too.

DoctorG

@Granite1 Do you run OpenVPN on your OS and server? or which one?

Granite1

@DoctorG I run Windscribe VPN on my laptop.

With blocking extensions disabled:

DoctorG

@Granite1 said in Manifest V3, webRequest, and ad blockers:

opportunity to improve Vivaldi's ad/tracker blocker?
The thing does not strip out the most basic tracker, the utm suffix in the address box

Vivaldi Blocker does not change URLs.
Removing some known tracking parameters would be a nice to have.

Pathduck

@Granite1 Yes it would be "nice to have" if Vivaldi's tracker blocker could remove such tracking url parameters. However, I wouldn't bet this happening in the foreseeable future. Not even sure it would be possible in Vivaldi. Best you can do is use an extension, I'm sure there are or will be Mv3 extensions that can do that.

Looks like this url is from clicking a RSS link. RSS feeds and emails often contain such parameters. It's just so the site knows where the traffic is coming from.

From what I can tell there's no unique identifiable parameters in the url anyway, so I wouldn't care in any case.

Granite1

@DoctorG said in Manifest V3, webRequest, and ad blockers:

Removing some known tracking parameters would be a nice to have.

I agree

Granite1

@Pathduck said:

Looks like this url is from clicking a RSS link.

Correct.

@Pathduck said:

so I wouldn't care in any case

Good point. There are, however, sites that put more in their trackers.

@Pathduck said:

I wouldn't bet this happening in the foreseeable future.

I don't. I filed an FR and got so much blowback that I asked for the FR to be archived, which was done.

When I saw this blogpost I thought it was a nice opportunity to ask the team directly. Unfortunately, Julian Picalausa has not replied, you, DoctorG and Catweazle have, and the message is clear: forget it !

So, I won't raise this issue anymore, and stick with my extensions Adguard and ClearURLs, the latter while MV2 still works.

Thanks for your feedback.

Pathduck

@Granite1 said in Manifest V3, webRequest, and ad blockers:

and the message is clear: forget it !

Well, that's the undiplomatic way of putting it.
I would rather say "Don't cross your fingers"

There's also already a feature request:
https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/77256/always-strip-urls-of-tracking-parameters

Granite1

@Pathduck said:

Well, that's the undiplomatic way of putting it.

Absolutely true, I am a fan of calling a spade a spade

Thank you for pointing me to the FR, which dates back to 2022, or even 2020.

It seems to me it is very low on the devs' priority list.

barbudo2005

@Granite1

Granite1

@barbudo2005 Thank you. Like I said, I am using Adguard so I have that filter enabled. I am also using ClearURLs, and between the 2 of them my URLs never have any suffixed trackers.

So, I gather you use Adguard too?

barbudo2005

@Granite1
I use uBO in Vivaldi. but I am testing Adguard for June 2025.

Granite1

@barbudo2005 said:

I use uBO in Vivaldi

I used uBO for many years until I discovered Adguard, which I find more convenient as it is a "set it and forget it" type of extension.

@barbudo2005 said:

but I am testing Adguard for June 2025.

June 2025: wow, that's 9 months into the future.