Block ads, trackers and third party cookies
UltraBlock was born out of pure frustration. In 2016 I was asked to speak on a conference about privacy. While preparing my presentation I did a lot of investigation into trackers, cookies and ads. This was the first time I actually noticed how far this industry goes.
Website load many trackers in the background
I've been a programmer for many years and know a lot about data and marketing. And just as many people I know exactly what third-party cookies are. But when you get those popups about "accept cookies" I just accept them. You never really think about it or check what third-party services are loaded in the background. So I started checking some websites and what they actually loaded in the background.
Average new website has over 70 trackers
With an open mounth I looked at the number of trackers on many websites. There were so many websites that had just so many trackers that I couldn't believe it. One of my favorite tech news websites (techcrunch.com) even loaded over 76 trackers! And that was only the homepage.
Over half of the commercial websites use Facebook a widget that is hosted at Facebook. These websites just copy/paste a piece of code to implement some Facebook logo's or features. This way Facebook actually can track what websites I'm visiting, where I came from and where I go. Facebook gets a very good view on how I spend my time online even when I'm not on Facebook.
And it's not only Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin but also thousands of marketing companies. There is no way to turn them off. Extensions like AdBlock, Ghostery and Disconnect help a little bit but you still have to configure them manually. Thats a lot of work and I wanted something that would block everything I didn't need.
UltraBlock blocks ads, trackers and third-party cookies
So thats why I created UltraBlock. UltraBlock is the most aggressive ad, tracker and cookie blocker on the planet. It automatically blocks everything you do not need.