Popular ad blocker uBlock Origin Lite pulled from Firefox store | PCWorld
www.pcworld.com

“The uBlock Origin Lite add-on was also accused of collecting user data and running afoul of privacy concerns, which is one of the big reasons why people switch over to the Firefox browser in the first place. Hill [the developer] responded: “It takes only a few seconds for anyone who has even basic understanding of JavaScript to see the raised issues make no sense.””

  • @airglowEnglish
    56•3 months ago

    Any details on that? The full uBlock Origin works well on mobile and I don’t see how a lite version with reduced blocking effectiveness could be more useful.

    • MadisEnglish
      36•3 months ago

      uBOL is entirely declarative, meaning there is no need for a permanent uBOL process for the filtering to occur, and CSS/JS injection-based content filtering is performed reliably by the browser itself rather than by the extension. This means that uBOL itself does not consume CPU/memory resources while content blocking is ongoing – uBOL’s service worker process is required only when you interact with the popup panel or the option pages.

      uBOL does not require broad “read/modify data” permission at install time, hence its limited capabilities out of the box compared to uBlock Origin or other content blockers requiring broad “read/modify data” permissions at install time.

      Emphasis mine. No background processes, including a website-reading permission does indeed sound more optimized for mobile, where people may have limited resources.