News
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- Fix: accounts.adobe.com (see issue)
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New crawl, new trackers blocked
- New crawl of the most popular 7,000 sites, uncovering over 8,000 trackers.
- Now blocking: quantcount.com, ads-twitter.com, everesttech.net, 1rx.io, adsafeprotected.com, sharethrough.com, pinterest.com, dotomi.com, vk.com, exoclick.com, visualwebsiteoptimizer.com, gssprt.jp, licdn.com, mail.ru, pingdom.net, spotxcdn.com, bannerflow.com, mixpanel.com, powerlinks.com, rfihub.net, , ad-stir.com.
- We will continue to add new trackers and handle issues with existing sites based on the new crawl in the coming days.
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- Fix: TMZ.com (see issue)
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App update: iPhone, iPad, & Mac
Release notes
- New: Full accessibility support across iOS and macOS.
- New: iCloud-synced exceptions list enables you to turn Better off for certain sites.
- New: Use the Email Us feature on the Exceptions screen to alert us if a particular site does not play nice with Better so we can fix it for everyone.
- New: Unified interface and experience across iOS and macOS.
- Fixed: The Mac app no longer displays erroneous “Better is not active” notifications on lock screen and when the screensaver is active.
- Fixed: The Mac app only notifies you when a data update is actually downloaded, not every time it checks for an update.
- Improved: The iOS app has a faster interface and better data loading performance.
- Lots of other miscellaneous bug fixes and little improvements.
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Blocking statically-embedded ads
- Now hiding statically-embedded DoubleClick ads on Heise.de (see issue for details). Also, now blocking first-party loads of DoubleClick.net so that if other sites are following this approach, you won’t be tracked by DoubleClick even if you mistakenly click on the ads.
- Improved experience on LATimes.com. This is standard procedure when we are forced to spend time investigating sites reported for blocking Better (see issue for details).
- Now blocking Taboola-like clickbait injector ZergNet.com.
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- Updated domain statistics
- Added support for panopticlick’s “tracker simulator”.
2016
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First community contribution
A big thank-you to long-term Ind.ie supporter Anselm Hannemann for our first community contribution to Better’s tracker database.
Thanks to Anselm, we are now blocking new trackers from Yahoo (yieldmanager.com and yieldmanager.net), AppNexus (yieldoptimizer.com), Polar Mobile (bf-ad.net) as well as Yieldify, Yieldmo, YieldLab AG, Roq.ad Gmbh, and Yield Partners International B.V.
Anselm found the trackers on Focus Online.
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Bing Maps embeds now display correctly.
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Bild.de is off the Better web.
- Bild.de has blocked our ability to protect you from tracking – at least on iOS. As they are acting like malware, we are now treating them as malware. As of now, we are blocking Bild.de and links to Bild.de on the web.
- We are now also blocking all the trackers that are on Bild.de. The newly added trackers are: Adition, Contact Impact, Adrtx by ascio, an unidentified tracker by Axel Springer, DF-SRV, emetriq by T-Mobile, InfoOnline, nugg.ad, rtbLab by EASYmedia, Tealium, The ADEX, visualrevenue.com by Outbrain, Xplosion Interactive, and Yieldlab AG. Thank you, Bild, for drawing our attention to these additional trackers with your malicious behaviour.
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Blocked blocker blocker Publico.es
- Fixed issue with Better being blocked on Publico.es, cleaned up the experience, and blocked all trackers on it.
- Now also blocking iadbox, SimpleAdServer CDN, Volvelle by Optomaton (Ve Interactive), and some first-party ads thanks to Público.
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We dressed up as Google for Halloween because we think that tracking everything you do across the web (which is how Google makes money) is really scary.
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October Content Update #2
- Fixed issue with Better being blocked on The Atlantic, cleaned up the experience, and blocked all trackers on it.
- Now also blocking comScore, SimpleReach (d8rk54i4mohrb.cloudfront.net), Komoona, Media.net, Sizmek (peer39.com), Taboola (perfectmarket.com), RuTarget, SimpleReach, Smaato, and Imagini VisualDNA, thanks to The Atlantic.
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October Content Update #1
- Fixed issue with links not working on Macworld, cleaned up the experience, and blocked all trackers on it.
- Now also blocking bluecava.com, budgetedbauer.com, d3qxwzhswv93jk.cloudfront.net, fallingfalcon.com, gigya.com, jsonip.com, llnwd.net, sail-horizon.com, and travelaudience.com, thanks to Macworld.
- Updated the top 100 trackers based on October scan.
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Added kixer.com to block list.
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Your Mac, now Better!
Better is now available on macOS Sierra and El Capitan (Safari 10 is required for El Capitan).
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Spotlight Issue №2
Our second major content update turns the spotlight onto the publishing industry – or, more precisely, on what it has become: the behavioural advertising industry. We ask, ‘is the free press dead?’
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Fixed post-block reading experience on The Guardian.
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Better for Mac released on Safari Extension Gallery
- Note: The Safari Extension is now depracated. Development for macOS has moved to the Better Mac App.
- Fixed Twitter oAuth sign-ins from Tweetdeck.
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Better Safari Extension released for download from the Better site. (Note: The Safari Extension is now depracated. Development for macOS has moved to the Better Mac App.)
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iOS App Version 1.3: Size matters
The latest Better for iPhone and iPad update reduces size of the app considerably, fixes a start-up crash that some people were experiencing on first load, and comes packaged with the latest block rules (please remember to launch the app after you install the update to get the latest content).
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Major update to how we’re handling Google. Much more granular block rules. Fixes Google Maps embeds & Recaptcha.
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Blocking rules now more specific. Fixed Google images, eBay images issues. Better performance.
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Version 1.1: Update happy!
- Content updates on the iOS app are triggered every time you start or return to the app. Added visible progress indication for content updates.
- Fixed Google News.
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Blocking flite.com (full-screen video doorslam).
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Fixed yimg tracker blocking Yahoo properties.
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Fixed Facebook image uploads.
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Fixed Twitter logins, now blocking Google AdSense on StartPage.com.
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Version 1.0: Hello, world!
After eight months of work, we launched Better for iPhone and iPad.