“I don’t care about cookies“ web extension acquired by Avast

https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/whats-new/acquisition/

by SamuelAdams • 4 years ago

267 220 4 years ago

My web browsing just got interrupted by a new tab that opened without asking me, informing me of this acquisition. I have a 'one strike' rule for abusive behavior in extensions, and immediately removed it.

crooked-v• 4 years ago

In my experience this is fairly common for "what's changed" listings for extensions. It's probably mostly to do with how browsers don't provide any good native mechanism for that.

PaulHoule• 4 years ago

For good reason.

It's a pretty safe bet you can throw any mail that has "IMPORTANT" printed on the envelope in the trash.

Every online store, software vendor and web site wishes they could get my attention for an "IMPORTANT" message at least 100x more often than I wish they did.

krageon• 4 years ago

Nobody cares what changed, and nobody should have to care.

Klaster_1• 4 years ago

Sublime Text extensions do this too, quite annoying when you open an editor for for a quick note and several seconds in the typing focus switches to a new tab. Of course, browser extensions that do this are annoying too, especially when you get bombarded by new tabs if you didn't use the browser in a while. This is so user-hostile, how come the issue wasn't tackled by browser vendors yet?

reaperducer2• 4 years ago

several seconds in the typing focus switches to a new tab

I've never understood why operating systems allow focus switching.

It's always been a pox on Windows, but macOS does this more and more these days. Just this morning, I plugged in a USB hard drive, then returned to my other work while it mounted. Suddenly, I'm typing a memo into Finder's password field to unlock the drive. Just. Stop. It.

If you need my attention, there is no shortage of methods to do that — Beep. Bounce the icon in the dock. Notifications messages. Your stupid program is not more important than whatever I'm doing at that moment in time.

rjh29• 4 years ago

It's like with phone apps. Every single phone app thinks it is the centre of the universe and is "only" sending you a few notifications per day, but if you extend this to every app on your phone you'll get hundreds a day and the only recourse is to disable them entirely.

Swizec3• 4 years ago

Teachers: "My students are smart and diligent, 30min of homework per day should be well within their abilities"

Students: have 4 hours of homework per day

The latest app that needs their notifications disabled on my phone is Amazon. Shame really, knowing about packages was useful. But I really don't need spam about "Hey this thing you glanced at is on sale now" every 2 days.

Fatnino2• 4 years ago

Worst of all, the actual phone call app.

Why much I jump through countless hoops just to make it so a third party doesn't have the ability to take over the full screen and audio of the device I was actively using?

Ideally an incoming call would only vibrate the device briefly and put an icon in the status bar. That's it. Instead, I don't remember what I did anymore but it's completely suppressed on my device now. It's actually worked out OK because I don't give my number to anyone new and anyone who does know it also knows by now that I don't pick up and to contact me some other way. Means that ~100% of incoming calls are spam and my device is correctly filtering them all to /dev/null

MichaelCollins8• 4 years ago

Every single phone app thinks it is the centre of the universe and is "only" sending you a few notifications per day, but if you extend this to every app on your phone you'll get hundreds a day and the only recourse is to disable them entirely.

Is there a general name for this sort of bias? It's not just phone apps and notifications; I notice this center of the universe attitude in developers of all kinds of auxiliary programs. Chat app programmers who think that quip "unused ram is wasted ram", which they learned in the context of the OS caching files in ram, gives their chat app license to use as much ram as the user may have. It ignores all the other programs the user is probably running that are much more important than their chat app. To the chat app developer, the chat app is the center of the universe and the user has no use for any of their ram besides running the chat app.

TheJoeMan• 4 years ago

Then there is someone nearly the same who cries foul when they aren’t told a new company owns the extension. What if Google bought it and was going to harvest that “ability to read and change website data” permission?

Ajedi322• 4 years ago

Yeah, I dislike the intrusive nature of the notification, but I can't really think of a better way off the top of my head. The notification API could work in theory, but if you don't already have that permission it would be odd to request it just for a one-time message like this.

ls15• 4 years ago

It should tell you before you install or update the extension, not randomly when they decide that now is the best time.

Flimm• 4 years ago

This is the polar opposite of abusive behaviour.

OrvalWintermute• 4 years ago

I think the "stealing of focus" is what the commenter took issue with.

Many people complain about OSes and apps for that matter, stealing focus inappropriately.

ouid2• 4 years ago

Yesterday discord asked me, upon install, for permission to capture keystrokes when it is not in focus.

gibspaulding• 4 years ago

Do you have push-to-talk enabled, or a keybind for toggle-mute? That's a super abusable permission and this isn't to say they aren't abusing it, but there is a reason for it to exist.

jasonlotito• 4 years ago

Part of that is handling the Discord overlay. So, when you are in a game, and you are in a Discord VC, you can display who is talking. There are keyboard shortcuts that come along with that which you can use if you want.

In order to detect those keyboard short cuts, they need to listen for them.

You are free to not give them permission.

Posting about asking permission under a comment talking about "abusive" behavior is a bit odd.

petesergeant• 4 years ago

That's _exactly_ what I'd want to happen? Transfer of ownership of an extension that has access to my most intimate data, I want a klaxon to go off...

dylan6042• 4 years ago

That sounds like somethign that should happen on new window launch or after a relaunch of app kind of thing. For the browser to just randomly open a tab is very uncool

andrepd• 4 years ago

What an odd complaint. The annoyance of 1 pop-up is negligible compared to the extreme usefulness of letting me know that the extension was acquired. That is what makes me uninstall the extension.

mdrzn• 4 years ago

"I will keep working on the project and the extension will remain free to use" seems the best outcome of selling something

luckylion2• 4 years ago

* (we'll monetize your data instead, keeping the extension free to use)

shp0ngle2• 4 years ago

I remember older version of this extension was distributed under GPL... maybe someone can dig it up and put it on github.

shp0ngle2• 4 years ago

Ah it still is, as of 3.4.2. The newest version is still GPLv3.

It's in Chrome extensions folder in Profile, in LICENSE.

I think that means the extension can still be put to github even right now and re-distributed.

walthamstow3• 4 years ago

I have recovered and am hosting the version 3.4.2 source code, the version prior to the Avast acquisition, at the below repo

https://github.com/elgrove/idcac-3.4.2

omgmajk3• 4 years ago

Love how it's already been forked five times. Fantastic.

cbsks3• 4 years ago

I can think of lots of nefarious reasons why a company would buy a browser extension, but I’m having a hard time thinking of a a potential good outcome of this. If we put on our optimism hats, why would Avast buy an extension? What benefit could they possibly get from it?

Edit: Maybe it is just a talent acquisition?

burkaman• 4 years ago

Avast has its own browser, maybe they wanted to implement this feature natively in the browser and figured it would just be easier to acquire an already working solution.

ask_otter• 4 years ago

Browser extensions were main data source for their analytics subsidiary Jumpshot [1], which was shutdown for privacy reasons. Before that, when Mozilla and Opera started asking about their extensions, they rather removed them [2].

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjdkq7/avast-antivirus-sells...

[2] https://palant.info/2019/12/03/mozilla-removes-avast-extensi...

cbsks3• 4 years ago

That’s troubling. My optimism hat is starting to look silly…

mort962• 4 years ago

That's one of the nefarious reasons, not one of the optimistic ones.

MichaelCollins8• 4 years ago

There's no utility in trying to steel-man the actions of a known bad actor. Avast is a malware company. Would you try to guess at the optimistic reasons a gangster like Al Capone has for buying all the businesses in your neighborhood?

kytazo• 4 years ago

Ok thanks, I uninstalled it already

rcMgD2BwE72F3• 4 years ago

What's the best alternative?

Tajnymag• 4 years ago

You could add the underlying list to ublock. Or use a different list like Fanboy's Annoyance or EasyList Cookie

wartijn_4• 4 years ago

This extention clicks on accept on every cookie notice you encountered. I don't think you can just block all those notices and expect sites to keep working.

rcMgD2BwE72F3• 4 years ago

Thanks but I'm already using both and this fails to reject or accept cookies prompts most of the time.

bni• 4 years ago

Hush

rcMgD2BwE72F3• 4 years ago

That's for Safari only right? I don't care about cookies does not support Safari and I'm on Firefox.

dinkblam• 4 years ago

Avast was caught stealing data from their users a while back:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjdkq7/avast-antivirus-sells...

so calling them 'a famous and trustworthy IT company' is quite a thing. infamous perhaps.

Cthulhu_2• 4 years ago

I'm 99% confident that this announcement and the language used was part of the purchase deal.

uwuemu• 4 years ago

I have one question: Why THE HELL isn't this a part of all browsers already? Why does it have to be some obscure 3rd party extension? And I don't mean just Chrome, I mean all of them. All browsers should have this option: "I don't care about gdpr cookies". Set a window object window.dontcare and done. Sites can check this and automatically comfirm or don't even show gdpr banners if window.dontcare is set. This cookie bullcrap has been a forced on all of us from the bureaucrat bastards in the EU, and now everyone has to click on what are essentially popup banners of the 2000s every time they visit a new site (or even the same site a bit later!). Fuck that. No, let me say it again: FUCK THAT.

Implementing this into a browser would be the biggest QOL improvement any web browser could possibly do at this point.

rileymat2• 4 years ago

There would be very little value to a website respecting that flag if it is a significant part of revenue.

yrro3• 4 years ago

Waah the big bad EU forced companies to disclose how they are using my data!

What I would like to see browsers do is grow a feature that tells web servers what uses of my data I consider acceptable, so that I don't have to waste my time every time I visit nearly every site on the entire damn Internet.

But we've been there before - P3P, Do-Not-Track, and now Global Privacy Control. Until regulators force web sites to obey signals from browsers, we're going to be stuck with these bloody popups.

IMTDb3• 4 years ago

I fully agree with you BUT you proposal is actually not allowed by the GDPR law. The legislation forbids website to trust a global setting when choosing how to handle cookies.

In other words: browsers are perfectly allowed and capable of implementing the setting, but websites are forbidden to use it.

Yep, it’s that crazy. The legislator really likes blocking banners.

kayxspre• 4 years ago

If I recall correctly, Vivaldi has this feature built-in, though as part of the ad-blocking feature (the "Cookie" list is classified as "Ads", not "Trackers"). Vivaldi's list defaults to IDCAC and EasyList Cookie, though, so we'll have to see whether Vivaldi will continue to use IDCAC list or switch to other solution.

xfalcox• 4 years ago

OH NO, this is my favorite extension. What to do now?

moviuro2• 4 years ago

Write more filters for uBlock Origin and unbreak the web?

e.g. https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardFilters/tree/master/An...

awiesenhofer3• 4 years ago

Filters wont help you here, the extension actively clicked the consent forms for you, not something you can do with filter lists.

StephenSmith• 4 years ago

Is there a version of this product that tells the site to block all cookies automatically? It seems this just answers whatever is easiest to keep the site running.

awiesenhofer3• 4 years ago

Damn, this sucks!

Anyone know of a good alternative?

(No, UBOs annoyance/cookie filters dont come close sadly...)

parmezan• 4 years ago

Deinstalled. Very sad because this this extension made my life better. Any open source (FLOSS) alternative?

o_m• 4 years ago

You can active filters in ublock origin that blocks cookie banners. I think the one I'm using is "Fanboy’s Annoyance".

dngray2• 4 years ago

THIS. Which is why we don't recommend extensions on privacyguides.org besides uBO (uBlock Origin). If that ever gets bought, you'll hear about it everywhere and there will most likely be a fork.

These days for privacy with Firefox you really don't need anything else. There are a few others that may have something to offer https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js/wiki/4.1-Extensions for specific purposes.

sdze• 4 years ago

Blocking cookie popups renders some pages unusable. For instance adidas. I could not scroll when blocking cookie prompt.

severine• 4 years ago

Not exactly the same, but I'm happy so far with Consent-O-Matic:

https://consentomatic.au.dk/

mnw21cam• 4 years ago

Definitely recommend this one. I have it switched to not consenting to anything, and I haven't seen a cookie popup since.

grey_earthling2• 4 years ago

Although using dark patterns is illegal, the laws are not enforced enough, so many websites get away with it.

The problem with consent pop-ups isn't the European law; it's the failure to properly enforce it.

sam1r• 4 years ago

I'm not a browser extension developer -- but I wonder how long it would take for another extension that does exactly the same thing.

walthamstow3• 4 years ago

I have recovered and am hosting the version 3.4.2 source code, the version prior to the Avast acquisition, at the below repo

https://github.com/elgrove/idcac-3.4.2

omgmajk3• 4 years ago

Time to deactivate. Shame.

marcodiego• 4 years ago

AFAIK the license is GPLv3. So avast is acquiring what exactly? The name?

Cthulhu_2• 4 years ago

The account in the extension store, and the ability to auto-update everyone's installed version for their own goals - whichever they may be.

aneutron• 4 years ago

So this URL just jumped to me opened by the extension. I instantly uninstalled it, and reported it to Mozilla.

I hate that I have to, but I have to.

NeveHanter2• 4 years ago

Well two things/questions:

1. Can we somehow get Mozilla/Firefox ban/de-list the extension from the extension store so Avast doesn't get the user-base this extension has/had?

2. We should be able to get the author to publish the source code of the latest version licensed under GPLv3, any way to do this, except asking on Twitter/LinkedIn?

edf13• 4 years ago

Why should you be able to get source code of someone’s private work?

NeveHanter2• 4 years ago

If it's GPLv3 licensed, then I should be able to request and get the access to the source code:

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MustSourceBuildToM...

and

https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt section 6, point d

Zufriedenheit• 4 years ago

I think Firefox extensions are just archives. So with that license it should be allowed to simply download the extension, unpack it and throw it on Github.

Probable8618• 4 years ago

The license is still GPLv3 so anyone can take the source code, slap it on GitHub and maintain a more community run alternative.

maccard• 4 years ago

The license is still GPLv3 so anyone can take the source code, slap it on GitHub and maintain a more community run alternative.

2 out of 3 of those things are very easy, but "maintain a more community run alternative" is an enormous undertaking.

dessant3• 4 years ago

This is your cue to remove the extension from your browser immediately. I've been developing extensions for years, and I've never seen an extension acquisition done by a company like Avast not transform the extension into a data harvesting operation.

Judging by the size of the user base the author was paid at least 100k USD, all for an open source project that is free to fork. Avast has acquired you, the user, and the original maintainer continuing to work on the project is just a ruse, the new owners prefer to do it this way to reduce user loss until the business end of a future extension update is pushed out to your devices.

duxup2• 4 years ago

It's kinda sad what the browser extension ecosystem has become.

Seems like a neat hobbyist / handy tool space that quickly turned into a sorta predatory space.

dessant3• 4 years ago

It's not just browser extensions, but any popular software project that has no stable funding source. This extension has been maintained for years, and it requires a lot of effort to keep updated because it interacts with websites.

These developers are then offered funds for perhaps a new home, and they can hardly be faulted for taking the deal. This issue can only be solved by finding better ways to fund the development of popular software projects that serve the public good.

https://armin.dev/blog/2019/08/supporting-browser-extension-...

stjohnswarts2• 4 years ago

This is why I generally only use ones that are approved by mozilla that I have researched. Of course I currently have 5 extensions because I'm pretty cautious.

citruscomputing2• 4 years ago

Yep. Just import their filter list to uBlock Origin, and move on.

LordDragonfang• 4 years ago

And then switch to Firefox, apparently, since uBO filter lists are likely about to break on chromium.

jordemort• 4 years ago

Thanks for the tip, I didn't realize this was possible. Even if the extension wasn't sold, I'm still happier running one less extension.

For those looking for the list, here it is: https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/abp/

DavideNL4• 4 years ago

Unfortunately this does not work for many websites... it requires additional clicking which is done via javascript or something.

I think the IDCAC extension would probably not even exist if it was just a simple filter...

b3orn• 4 years ago

Oh, I think in this case it's a match made in heaven. It's an extension for people who don't care about data harvesting.

OrderlyTiamat2• 4 years ago

I use it to dismiss the popups, and the cookies get deleted after. So actually I do care about data harvesting, but I also care about a popup free internet.

heresaPizza2• 4 years ago

Not necessarily. I use an other extension to delete cookies and data from every website and uBlock Origin blocks connections to trackers. So all I used to get with this extension was a way less cluttered user experience. I will now replace it with a simpler uBlock list.

MasterYoda• 4 years ago

I just turned of auto update for the "I dont care of cookie" addon, just as a precautionary measure to see how this ends and until there is an good replacement.

no-reply3• 4 years ago

Me too.

heresaPizza2• 4 years ago

You can still use the official IDCAC list or another one in uBlock. It’s not as good in big companies’ websites (like google) that show their own interactive multi page banners bc the filters can’t simulate clicks, but it’s still good enough for an uncluttered navigation in most websites.

soulofmischief• 4 years ago

I miss the days when antivirus protected against spyware and adware, now even your browser and OS get in on the game and employs hostile tricks.

_joel2• 4 years ago

I wonder how many viruses were created by AV companies though? :)

noasaservice• 4 years ago

Thank you for the plugin removal notice.

margarina72• 4 years ago

ok, removed. Turns out ublock can do that too... On the bright side, Avast has less cash and some cool dev out there got to bank on its project.

meibo• 4 years ago

Avast is the worst of the worst snake oil AVs. I wouldn't let them anywhere near my browser.

Raed667• 4 years ago

I decompiled the extension a while back and it is a series of custom JS code for each website or CMP provider with matching rules.

Only checked the bundled version but the code seemed very custom and labor intensive to keep up with website changes. Best of luck to future forks and maintainers.

I didn't spend too much time on it, because a filter based approach seemed more maintainable.

t0bia_s• 4 years ago

Any alternatives? Cookies baners are incredibly annoying.

citruscomputing2• 4 years ago

They have a filter list: https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/abp/

If you have uBlock Origin, go to settings, filter lists, scroll to bottom, custom, import, paste this URL. Enable AdGuard annoyances while you're at it. It's not perfect, but this replicates the "don't show me cookie dialogs" feature pretty well.

celsoazevedo• 4 years ago

uBO doesn't accept or reject though and that is required for some sites to work. That's why I used this extension and uBO.

DavideNL4• 4 years ago

This one perhaps?

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/consent-o-mat...

https://github.com/cavi-au/Consent-O-Matic

DavideNL4• 4 years ago

Debloated fork of the extension "I don't care about cookies" (WIP) :

https://github.com/OhMyGuus/I-Dont-Care-About-Cookies

_joel2• 4 years ago

That's me deleting it

keepquestioning• 4 years ago

The Web is a shitshow

What does Brave do about the cookie crap?

InCityDreams3• 4 years ago

? As a Brave user, what are you actually asking for? My Brave opened a window that told me about the purchase. So I read the comments, immediately uninstalled IDCAC and installed a different cookie monitor (meh!), but what do you want Brave to do? I think if you can articulate that, there will be some good responses and suggestions for alternatives.

walthamstow3• 4 years ago

I have recovered and am hosting the source code for version 3.4.2, the version prior to the Avast acquisition, on GitHub at the following

https://github.com/elgrove/idcac-3.4.2

I am not well versed in open source licensing but I believe the GPL3 gives me permission to do this. Please could someone more knowledgeable confirm this for me.

I am not a web developer, I'm hosting the code in the hope that someone else will take it and fork it. It's one of my favourite extensions and a day 1 install on any new machine, along with UBO

Oktokolo• 4 years ago

Yes, the GPL 3 grants you the right to do this.

stainablesteel• 4 years ago

yep you can do whatever you want with it

dark-star• 4 years ago

no, certainly not

syockit• 4 years ago

No, you only have the license, not the copyright. So you are permitted to redistribute the code as stipulated by the license, but you are not allowed to, for example, relicense existing code to something else like BSD (except for modifications that you made afterwards).

sttav2• 4 years ago

Shit

MichaelCollins8• 4 years ago

This is why I want a browser with an extension repository that is managed in the same way linux distros like debian manage their repositories. It should only allow open source extensions in the repository, packaged by employees or volunteers known to the organization. If the upstream gets sold to a malware company like Avast, that package is forked or simply removed from the repositories if a trusted maintainer for a fork cannot be found.

xg152• 4 years ago

I mean, take a look at how many projects recommend curl | sh as the official way of installing their software and how many "alternative" package managers there are, where devs can just push updates directly.

The desire of developers to get around distro maintainers and grab full control of update distribution is strong...

MichaelCollins8• 4 years ago

I don't care about that. I am not asking for a browser or a linux distro that forbids the installation of extensions not in the repository. I want a browser that has a repository I can trust, as already exist for linux distros.

I cannot trust either Mozilla or Google's extension repositories, they are 'managed' in a substandard manner relative to Debian or android's F-Droid. Both of these extension repositories are managed so poorly it seems farcical to say they're managed at all.

piperswe• 4 years ago

Debian does package some open-source browser extensions (e.g. uBlock Origin https://packages.debian.org/bullseye/webext-ublock-origin-fi...), so you could install extensions that way if you're using Debian or a Debian derivative

colinsane2• 4 years ago

nixos with home-manager does some of this. my browser config points to a few repos which package an assortment of browser plugins and my `~/.mozilla` folder gets populated statically/read-only from the subset of plugins i choose from this list.

there's loads of UX improvements to be made. i update the plugins with `nix flake update` and `nixos-rebuild switch` and that process tells me which repos have new commits, but getting to a changelog for the relevant plugins is manual enough that i skip it. but it very much seems like a good direction to me.

sttav2• 4 years ago

What a shame. Uninstalled.

zac23or• 4 years ago

Avast - a famous and trustworthy IT company.

You can call Avast many things, but a "trustworthy IT company." is not one of those things.

rektide• 4 years ago

Consent-o-mattic and

Auto Cookie Optout are both pretty good.

They also let you block rather tham accept all cookies. Wild to me that the accept all cookies extension has been the winning one, but they have a cute name. You should care though, caring is cool & good, & you should care about privacy online & reducing the vast capitalist-survelliance machinery. It's easy, just use a non apathetic extension instead of one whose whole premise has been apathy.

(I hear uBlock Origin has an anti-annoyance filter or filters that does something to deal with cookie banners but unsure what.)

https://github.com/cavi-au/Consent-O-Matic

https://github.com/CodyMcCodington/AutoCookieOptout

DavideNL4• 4 years ago

Interesting to see the reviews... : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/i-dont-care-a...

omgmajk3• 4 years ago

It's the same thing on the google chrome store. The link I get from there seems personalized so can't share it, but it's still funny.

pornel• 4 years ago

There's https://ninja-cookie.com/ alternative.

rizoma_dev• 4 years ago

Does anyone have any alternative extensions to it?

loudandskittish• 4 years ago

"A cookie has been detected"

phendrenad2• 4 years ago

If the community really cares, raise some money and buy it back from them.

no-reply3• 4 years ago

If you are on 3.4.2 from 12-Aug-22, then a better option can be to disable auto update for the extension.

no-reply3• 4 years ago

I like how everyone is quick in stating the GPLv3 license and asking somebody to maintain it. I know I can't do that either but looking at everybody pointing fingers is funny.

eigenlicht• 4 years ago

Feels almost like the end of that part of the internet to me. ;) Or like with electricity or even drinking water, where you no longer realize how essential something is, until it fails. CoM, or what a this point appears most recommended, unfortunately doesn't do the trick for me, though I appreciate all efforts of course. Doesn't even work on BBC or Guardian, let alone on German sites that's where I'm based. Even when and where it does something, seems you still get to see everyting that's going on, there's a silly animation and it takes ages. Ages. Don't get me wrong but this is a step backward unless you're fantastically slow, and/or mouse-bound. I have the impression it's rendered all the more useless since I'm "private" mode only user (Firefox) and used to close windows often. Obviously still a better choice than IDCAC now. Anything is. But no way out for me. Until there is, I might as well go text browser only, for news, wikipedia and passive reading of stuff like HN.

InCityDreams3• 4 years ago

Fastest uninstall ever.

“I don’t care about cookies“ web extension acquired by Avast

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