Privacybadger: Avoid being overwhelmed by dynamically generated subdomains like *.googlevideo.com or *.pubnub.com

[Aldunnord]

Hello!

So far it works very well! Except for maybe one problem.

I found a site http://www.beatsense.com/masterofchillout/ where it keeps adding those entries (see below). With every hour its getting more and more and the list is getting longer and longer.

I'dont think that it makes sense that Privacy Badger is saving them to the Options Menu "has detected 597 potential tracking domains so far." section?

And what is happening with those entries, is Privacy Badger removing them after some time?

r1---sn-1gi7zn7y.googlevideo.com
r1---sn-1gi7znel.googlevideo.com
r1---sn-4g57knk6.googlevideo.com
r1---sn-4g5edn7z.ggooglevideo.com
r1---sn-ab5l6m7s.googlevideo.com
[+ 70!]

[jawz101]

I noticed that as well. I'm going to whitelist googlevideo.com. Personally, I have 2230 entries. The list is so long I can't count by hand which are Google video but let's say a fair chunk and they're all green since they're unique.
I really wish the devs would look at an anonymous submission option so they can see our lists for themselves to discern if these sorts of things have a logic/performance/privacy tradeoff.

[cooperq]

Hmm, I can see how this would be annoying. There is a reason that I list all subdomains though, it's because sometimes you want to override just one subdomain. Either way, maybe there is a way to make this UI better. I welcome any suggestions, otherwise I will think about it when I get around to it.

[jawz101]

@cooperq are there any performance limitations to PrivacyBadger on chrome or Firefox in general? Sometimes I think these observations don't present themselves because most of us run multiple add-ons trying to block things. If I remove the other extensions and refresh a page, Privacy Badger tells me the floodgates just opened.

If I eventually acquire 50,000 entries in the Privacy Badger thingy- are we going to see a drop in performance? I may try surfing w/ just PB to see how crazy things get because no one Internets like I Internet o_0

[Aldunnord]

@cooperq thanks for your reply. I will post some GUI ideas.

@jawz101 thats a good question about the performance impact. Isn't it the same with all other adblock extensions, wehre a more complex list is pushing up ram usage and page load times? PB will work a lot more diffrent I know, but I think the effect will be the same with a very large list.

btw.: PB runs fine on Vivaldi 1.3, keep up the good work!

[Aldunnord]

GUI Ideas:

• Changing the options menu to only one site. Like this:
  https://abload.de/img/guiconcept50snb.png
• Something like an auto-grouping system which kicks in, when there are more than 2 entries of the same domain.

For example:

r1---sn-1gi7zn7y.googlevideo.com
r1---sn-1gi7znel.googlevideo.com
r1---sn-4g57knk6.googlevideo.com
r1---sn-4g5edn7z.ggooglevideo.com
r1---sn-ab5l6m7s.googlevideo.com
r1---sn-4g5edn8z.googlevideo.com

to this:

[+] googlevideo.com

(when clicking on [+] or the title it expands all entries. And also an option to expand everything near the list.)

[cooperq]

I like the auto grouping idea, not sure about 1 tab instead of three, I would want to see some usability studies first. But I'm all for anything that makes the UI better for most people.

[ghostwords]

Here is another case, more than 27,000 pubnub.com subdomains from one website: https://github.com/EFForg/privacybadger/issues/1318#issuecomment-297184337

[ghostwords]

Another googlevideo.com report: https://github.com/EFForg/privacybadger/issues/1318#issuecomment-299579006

[cowlicks]

I think we should just store etld+1, but display subdomains in the popup. We should only store a subdomain of an etld+1 if it gets a user action from the popup. What do y'all think? cc @ghostwords @cooperq ?

[ghostwords]

We may not need to do anything beyond #1446, as both known cases (googlevideo.com and pubnub.com) don't seem to be tracking domains.

[cowlicks]

@ghostwords oh yea! good point