Web User - UK (2019-07-10)

Planned changes to Chrome have alarmed
privacy-tool developers such as Ghostery

StopusingGoogle Chrome

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10 - 23 July 2019 41

auto-playing videos with sound and

overlays that count down before the

page content loads. Could the

introduction of DeclarativeNetRequest

give Google even greater control over

online advertising? After all, in 2018 the

search giant received the bulk of its $116

WHY YOU SHOULDSTOPUSING CHROME

billion revenue from ads – around 85%

• so the fewer tools that can block them,
  the better. Google has banned many ad
  blockers from the Chrome Web Store
  and Google Play Store in the past,most
  notably AdNauseam (adnauseam.io),
  which not only filters ads but fake-clicks
  them to stop advertising networks
  tracking its users. The extension is still
  available for Firefox and Opera, and you
  can install it in Chrome via its GitHub
  page (bit.ly/adnauseam479).
  There are other reasons for
  suspecting that Google’s motivation for
  implementing Manifest V3 is business-
  related rather than for the benefit of

Chrome maystopyour ad
blocker working
The latest and arguably biggest concern
for Chrome users is that popular
ad-blocking tools such as uBlock Origin,
Adblock and Ghostery will soon stop
working properly. This is because of an
upcoming update to the browser called
Manifest V3, which will change the
permission system for Chrome
extensions and significantly limit their
ability to block online content.
Currently, most ad blockers use an
application programming interface
(API) called WebRequest to filter
certain content on web pages. Google
plans to phase out, or “deprecate”, this
in Chrome in favour of a new API, known
as DeclarativeNetRequest (bit.ly/
declarative479). Google says this will
fix a numberof alleged security and
performance problems caused by
WebRequest, but developers believe
it will cripple the ad-blocking
capabilities of their add-ons.

Initial fears stemmed from the news
that DeclarativeNetRequest would
support a maximum of 30,000 ad-
blocking rules – far short of the 91,000
rules required by EasyList, the filter list
that most content blockers use. Google
has since relented and raised the new
API’s limit to 150,000 rules, stating that
the changes in Manifest V3 were never
designed to “prevent or weaken ad
blockers” (bit.ly/google479). However,
developers will still need to rewrite the
code of their extensions for them to
work effectively, and some believe that
even 150,000 filtering rules may
eventually prove too limited (uBlock
Origin uses nearly 147,000).
Last year Chrome introduced its own
ad blocker, but this basic tool filters only
adverts that don’t meet its “standards”,
such as those that use pop-ups,

Chrome may seem like a pretty good browser, but some of its flaws are more serious

than others. Here we present the case against Chrome, and explain why the changes

Google is currently proposing are proving so controversial

One thing that might put you off moving from Chrome to another browser is

the prospect of losing your bookmarks, passwords and autofill data, and

having to start all over again. Fortunately, there are a few simple steps you

can take to avoid this hassle and make the transition as smooth as possible.

To migrate your data from Chrome to Firefox, open Mozilla’s browser,

click the Library icon in the top-right

corner (which looks like four books on a

shelf with one at an angle), and select

Bookmarks, Show All Bookmarks. When

the Library window opens, click the

‘Import and Backup’ button and choose

‘Import Data from Another Browser’.

Select Chrome, click Next and choose

the items you want to import, such as

cookies, browsing history, saved

passwords and bookmarks. Click Next

again and Firefox will perform the

migration. Once it’s done, click Finish to

return to the browser.

The process is similar when moving from Chrome to other Chromium-based

browsers. In Vivaldi, click the main menu and go to File, ‘Import Bookmarks

and Settings’. In Brave, you’ll find the same option under Bookmarks, while

in the new Edge, you should go to Favorites, Import.

Annoyingly, you can’t import all your extensions from Chrome to a new

browser, even a Chromium one, so you’ll need to open the Chrome Web

Store (chrome.google.com/webstore) or the Firefox Add-ons site (addons

.mozilla.org) and install them manually.

HOW TOSWITCHFROMCHROME

Chrome will limit ad blockers to 150,000

rules, which isn’t enough for some tools

Google banned AdNauseam from Chrome

for undermining its business model