Time to remove Nano Adblocker and Defender from your browsers (except Firefox)

[Karlston]

Time to remove Nano Adblocker and Defender from your browsers (except Firefox)

 

When Nano Defender was launched in 2019, it quickly became a go-to extension to bypass anti-adblocking mechanisms on Internet sites. It used code from uBlock Origin, one of the most prominent content blocking extensions, and users started to install the new extension in Chrome and other Chromium-based browsers.

 

One of the main differentiating factors between Nano Defender and uBlock Origin was that the former supported a reporting option to let the developer know about issues encountered while using the extension.  A port for Firefox was created by another developer to cover all major browsers on the Windows platform.

 

Nano Defender has more than 200,000 users that installed the extension from the Chrome Web Store alone.

 

The developer of the extension revealed on the official GitHub that he decided to sell the extension twelve days ago to two Turkish developers.

 

Community members and Raymond Hill, developer of uBlock Origin, shared their thoughts on the deal and the fact that little information was provided. Gorhill suspected that the new owners main intention was to monetize the extension in one form or another, or do worse with it.

 

 

The new owners uploaded a new version to the Chrome store, and careful analysis of the code of the extension revealed that it contained a new connect.js file that did not come from the project's GitHub page.

 

Hill provided an analysis of the code and discovered that the new code allowed the developers to submit user activity and data to remote servers.

The extension is now designed to lookup specific information from your outgoing network requests according to an externally configurable heuristics and send it to https://def.dev-nano.com/.

Hill suggested that users uninstall Nano Defender / Nano Adblocker immediately to block data from being submitted to the new owners.

 

The Firefox fork of the extension was not part of the deal, and the maintainer of it expressed interest to rename it and continue maintaining it. All other versions of the extension, basically any for Chromium-based browsers, should be removed immediately. Users who want to be on the safe side should remove the Firefox extension as well.

 

 

Time to remove Nano Adblocker and Defender from your browsers (except Firefox)

 

[cyberloner]

support ad keep site alive...... else many site will dead

[Sylence]

I'm gonna just keep using built in tracking prevention inside Microsoft Edge and set it to strict (with exception lists and wildcarding domains). don't trust these 3rd parties. Manifest V3 is a must have against these developers.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/web-platform/tracking-prevention

[DarkMist]

Well, that really sucks as it was a great ad blocker.....adguard time!

[Alanon]

2 hours ago, Sylence said:

I'm gonna just keep using built in tracking prevention inside Microsoft Edge and set it to strict (with exception lists and wildcarding domains). don't trust these 3rd parties. Manifest V3 is a must have against these developers.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/web-platform/tracking-prevention

 

I wish someone conducted a thorough analysis of the efficacy of tracking protection in these browsers. I remember reading that they all seem to use the same two or three sets of databases, but I've never seen anything on differences in application. Without some research, we have no way of knowing what's sufficient – built-in tracking blocking, or a combo of that and Privacy Badger, or a combo of that and an ad blocking extension/software. Or maybe just the extension... Or maybe they impede one another. What a mess.

[steven36]

1 hour ago, DarkMist said:

adguard time!

This can't replace Nano Defender    , Nano Adbolcker  was way behind UBO  anyway all  it took was  little configuration to get  it  working  in UBO   , besides i always never trusted adguard  desktop version ever bother  read the privacy policy and check with a network sniffer ? It closed source and uses Google and Yandex analytics the very stuff adblockers should be blocking not be using for another  revenue stream . I will stay with open source ones were  at if they add something bad too it i will know  to  use something else.

 

I always  just used UBO  with Nano Defender   ,   Nano Defender is a fork off of the old user scripts anti adbolck killer  preceded by  AAK-Cont  , the reason they replaced  it with a extension was  due to anti adbolck  updates  maintaining a userscript  stop working very good.

 

People reported the Chrome version  its done been removed  from Google Store

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nano-adblocker/gabbbocakeomblphkmmnoamkioajlkfo

 

As long as the new maintainer of Nano Adbolcker  and  Nano Defender  for Chrome does anything  fishy  these extension wont exist at Google Store .

 

The Firefox  version  of  what i use  are  not effected  with malware  it makes me glad im not a big Chromium  user

 

[steven36]

The  last  clean version for  Chromium for  Nano Defender is here  you just have to sideload  it and fix  it to work in UBO

https://github.com/jspenguin2017/uBlockProtector/releases/tag/v15.0.0.205

 

Since  i use Ungoogled  Chromium it dont have  Google services  i update my extensions manually with Chromium Web Store extension Google has no control over my updates addons or Browser updates  i have Ungoogled  Chromium  PPA  added to my system  i control it  instead of it controlling me  . Mine never  updated  to the malware version. 

 

See one update     Time to  update UBO  lol.

 

The  Nano Defender filter list are safe for UBO  they just been archived  by the old maintainer soon they will  be  updated  list by  @LiCybora the Firefox maintainer.

https://github.com/LiCybora/NanoDefenderFirefox/issues/187

 

 

 

 

The new maintainers  are not on GitHub they left or got deleted nether  do they control  the EDGE  version  still the old maintainer  controls it .They only controlled the versions that  been deleted from Google Store  so there 0 threat  Brave  and Google  will  disable  it automatically if yours updated already  since Google is in control  and your not. If not the versions you dont want are these

 

 

 

https://github.com/jspenguin2017/Snippets/issues/2#issuecomment-709988018

 

 

 

https://github.com/NanoAdblocker/NanoCore/issues/362#issuecomment-709428210