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by atombender 2293 days ago
Personally, I don't want to micromanage "containers" as a user. I truly don't understand why this is considered a nice feature. Who wants to micromanage anything?

What I want is for every web page to run in its own container by default. Zero configuration.

If it wants to access anything outside of its allowed domain hiearchy (like call an external API), I'd like the browser to ask for permission on its behalf. "Github.com would like to share data with Microsoft.com. Allow/Deny?"

There could be some kind of trust standard so that Github.com can prove that they are the same legal entity as Microsoft.com and is therefore authorized to share information without asking. Or perhaps something simpler that is DNS-based, like with email.

3 comments

I use Temporary Containers for getting each web page to run in its own container: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/temporary-con...

When I want to stay logged into anything I self-manage and create a named container. (This requires micromanaging but is at least opt-in.)

But the default of separate temp containers is great.

I do the same. Have been doing it for a while now, and the internet still works but I get less creepy ads (when I do since I also block those as much as possible).
Is there a similar extension for Chrome/Chromium?
I don't think so.
I don't want to sound dismissive of your proposal, it'd be great to have a more restrictive set of defaults to prevent tracking...

But just consider the automatic way a regular user clicks at any prompt that gets in their way out of habit...

I am guilty of this sometimes, even though I try to be mindful and always try to opt-out of tracking cookies, etc.

I think the system you're proposing has to have some sort of smart way to whitelist, either by granting temporary whitelisting with varying granularity (e.g. for this session, for 1 hour, forever ... Etc).

I think Privacy Badger (the add-on) has partially solved this (learning through counting how many times a tracker's domain appears on other sites), maybe this could applied in reverse: automatically whitelist after N approvals.

What do you think?

Whatever system is used, it would have to be low-noise, yes.
Try umatrix you could use it a little like this.

Sadly most sites use a lot of third party javascript, css etc so it will be a clunkier experience than you are hoping for.

That just sounds like more micromanagement to me?
What is the difference to answering 10 to 20 "Allow/Deny?" question on each website? The website just won't work until you figure out which 3 of the 15 requests are needed to render the website properly. Most of these domains aren't "microsoft.com" but something like "gibberish123.net". Good luck guessing whether the request is legitime/usefull.

edit: sounds like another addon idea: find the minimal set of 3rd parties needed to render a website.

> find the minimal set of 3rd parties needed to render a website.

uMatrix tries to do this already with some third party scripts, but it’s a moving target.

You can eliminate most of those things based on general blacklisting rules for ads and beacons of the kind that adblockers currently rely on.