https://adbleed.eu/ for the proof of concept demonstration
This isn’t a new technique. Adblock list fingerprinting has been around for as long as I’ve been using it. There are even public facing tools online that can recognise what combination of lists you have.
Yep, this is blatant sensationalism about something that has been known for ages.
Content Filters and Proxy Detection - BrowserLeaks has for example detected regional ad-block filters for years.
My bad, you are right. I think I’ve already tested this BrowserLeaks page. Since it’s an old topic, is there a consensus on what the best action to take is to bypass this issue? DNS blocking might be better?
What about is “blatant sensationalism”? Its an article reporting on a security researchers blog post from yesterday. While I agree its fair to say its reporting on old news, I am not sure that it deserves to be called blatant sensationalism.
The article itself doesnt come off overly dramatic or sensational, atleast on first read but I admit I am a novice on this topic.
Avoid changing the filters yourself. That’s why we recommend using your VPN’s DNS, since that’s what other VPN users will be using. Most have built-in ad/tracker blocking. The same goes for your browser, whether it has built-in ad-blocking or you use an extension; just use the default filters.
The title is pretty on the nose imo. It’s not a new technique and it doesn’t undermine VPN anonymity since fingerprinting already exists using loads of metrics plus the fact that VPNs don’t provide anonymity anyways.
Typically writers do not even choose their own titles, so I think if thats your whole reasoning its a bit weak.
Even so, I feel its a bit harsh to deem the whole article sensationlist when this title is relatively calm compared to the sea of click bait titles and articles put out by much more respected and known publications then cyberinsider.com
I don’t know what to tell you; you don’t have to agree with my view that it is blatantly sensationalist.
True, and the wonderful part of a forum is I get to explain why I don’t agree. 
I don’t see why that would insulate the title from any criticism.
Is it better to disable social media integration using uBO at the cost of becoming more unique?
I use uBO mainly to declutter my browsing experience. Annoyances have to go.
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I have a somewhat specific setup because I switch between Mullvad VPN and Proton VPN, but I generally find that Proton doesn’t have very good DNS for filtering. I would like to have more customization options for DNS on Proton, like what Mullvad offers.
The question is delicate because you are right: using the DNS provided by your VPN is the best option, but what should you do when they are not sufficient? I have to choose between DNS or in-browser blocking.
I misread the comment and deleted my original response.
It should not insultate the title. My point is the title isn’t enough to deem the whole article sensationalist, in my opinion.
Brave allows you to select additional content filters within the internal brave://adblock page. We advise against using this feature; instead, keep the default filter lists. Using extra lists will make you stand out from other Brave users and may also increase attack surface if there is an exploit in Brave and a malicious rule is added to one of the lists you use.
I mean, even if you’re saying the title is but the article isn’t, the article itself makes exactly the same blatantly sensationalist claim as the title
A new browser fingerprinting technique dubbed AdBleed reveals a previously overlooked privacy leak vector, country-specific adblock filter lists, that can partially de-anonymize users even when traffic is routed through a VPN or Tor.
It doesn’t matter whether they’re sensationalist or not.
It’s online press, they need to make huge numbers on their views. And if it can allow a few people to be interested in the subject or even the community around filtering to take up the subject, that’s so much the better. Let’s approach things by their purpose.
How does uBO compare to a modified hosts file or router based DNS service?
Are host file lists immune to this?