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Adblock Sold to Mystery Company
- ck2 11y agoI've always wondered what happens if a browser extension gets taken over by an entity someday that puts in bad code after millions of people have it installed and it gets auto-updated. Sure it's open-source and will get noticed eventually, but there will be days if not weeks of exposure. Same thing for all those android apps you have installed. If it doesn't add permissions, you'll never get a warning that something has really changed.
- huntermeyer 11y agoI'm placing 80% of my bet on Google (Alphabet). The remaining 20% on Yahoo.
- ck2 11y agoDidn't get that for a moment, you mean you think Google or Yahoo bought the very product that blocks their income? Despite all the alternatives that can be installed instantly?
- cmcnally 11y agoAdblock does not block Google ads by default.
- hullo 11y agoby Google ads do you mean ads on Google? Or AdSense ads placed across the web (AFS? AFC?)? or do you mean AdSense + Doubleclick (DFA, DFP, ...) + AdExchange + AdMob + I could go on for a long while. Bottom line is google, more than anyone else, has a lot of skin in this game.
- eli 11y agooh who purchased the plugin? I'll take the other side of both those bets.
- redredred 11y agohttp://www.pcworld.com/article/2089580/spammers-buy-chrome-extensions-and-turn-them-into-adware.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/2089580/spammers-buy-chrome-e...
- makecheck 11y agoThat's what's funny about some of our security mechanisms today...for instance the browser tries to help you ensure that this is the site you really meant to reach but it has no information about whether the site is under "new management" (which you tend to care about for something like a restaurant). Maybe companies should be mandated to update their key stores every time they change their board members, say, so that the old keys are revoked and you must take some action to "approve" of the new people running the company.
- shabble 11y agoIt'd also be kinda neat if you could somehow tag your trust conditional on a content hash of the service's ToC or Privacy Policy. It'd be rather impractical in today's world, although maybe machine readable policy formats would make matching easier additions/deletions of key items rather than just a text hash. Balancing the user effort of reading and flagging each policy term (and considering all the weird implications of each change) vs the utility of being notified would be tricky though. Maybe some sort of collaborative/curated lists of 'substantial T&C changes' similar to adblocker filterlists could be produced? (Or maybe they already are?)
- bzbarsky 11y agoThis is why Mozilla addon updates get reviewed before getting pushed out to users. It's not foolproof, but it's designed to at least have a chance of catching this sort of issue.
- ck2 11y agoIf you think a mozilla review is good enough, you are going to be disappointed. Pretty easy to do code obfuscation that a human will miss and automated testing will have no idea how to handle.
- ycitera 11y agoThis is one reason why Google should stop asking you to update all software automatically (and they are asking you, what seems like, multiple times a day?).
- shwetank 11y agoWith the [Opera addons catalog](https://addons.opera.com https://addons.opera.com), every update goes through a moderation process to prevent this kind of situation from happening (which is one of the reasons why we encourage everyone to install extensions from the official addons catalog site rather than from other sources).
- dantillberg 11y agoI'm glad to see this here. I saw this update yesterday, and the text was so typical of a company-acquisition-I-should-not-trust. Excerpt: "I believe this is a great thing for you users". Yet this is not accompanied by anything that suggests how users will possibly benefit from any of this. Can someone suggest alternatives to Adblock that aren't controlled by dubious/secret/obviously-sketchy third parties?
- tokenizerrr 11y agouBlock
- sanqui 11y agoOr uBlock Origin, which seems to be preferred due to disruptions with the developer who took over uBlock. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
- quesera 11y agoCritically, uBlock Origin. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
- loco5niner 11y agouBlock Origin is more deserving of your recommendation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock
- elbac 11y agoCheck out uBlock Origin.
- rambambam 11y agoI use NoScript, a free plugin for Firefox. It's a little more technical than I was used to, but since this is HN, that shouldn't be a problem for most readers. When I say "a little more technical", I don't mean it's not usable. It's very user-friendly and works like a charm.
- deleted 11y ago
- lorenzhs 11y agoTo anyone who is concerned by this change, I recommend taking a look at μBlock Origin [1,2]. It's blazingly fast, very flexible, and under active development. I made the switch about a year ago and it has served me very well. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock [2] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpalhdlnbpafiamejdnhcphjbkeiagm https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa...
- newscracker 11y agoThe only disadvantage, if one could call it that, is that uBlock Origin does not have a version for Safari, which uBlock has. I have read a bit about the controversies between uBlock Origin vs. uBlock. I prefer uBlock Origin wherever available.
- ddp 11y agouBlock 0.9.5.2 is available for Safari. It looks an awful lot like µBlock Origin on Chrome.
- newscracker 11y agoI know uBlock has a version for Safari, which I mentioned in my comment. However, uBlock Origin does not, which I also mentioned. Is there something unclear about what I said above? Both uBlock Origin and uBlock have similar code bases because they were "born" from the original uBlock (now called uBlock Origin).
- s73v3r 11y agoProbably that there's a difference between uBlock and uBlock Origin.
- coldpie 11y agoWorks great on Firefox for Android, too. No more app store popups!
- DigitalSea 11y agoI just switched over to uBlock Origin. The lack of transparency here worries me.
- kazinator 11y agoNote that Adblock isn't Adblock Plus: AdBlock is not to be confused with Adblock Plus. The creator of AdBlock claims to have been inspired by the Adblock Plus extension for Firefox, which is itself based on another extension called Adblock. But otherwise AdBlock is unrelated to the other efforts. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdBlock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdBlock] No alarm here for ABP users. (Like me).
- newscracker 11y agoABP also introduced an Acceptable Ads option a few years ago that triggered the creation of a fork called AdBlock Edge without that option. Adblock Edge was recently discontinued in favor of uBlock Origin [1], which has a much smaller memory footprint and is faster. [1]: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
- dvh 11y agouBlock origin is bigger (js wise) than both AdBlock and AdBlock plus and uBlock, comparison: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/msT3z9naIEkfKFjrj2G3G67moSuKz-l4zAFPmKfaNggvKDuJxb3DnA1I1x_YUexeYMGJjl84_74=s640-h400-e365-rw https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/msT3z9naIEkfKFjrj2G3G67moS...
- lorenzhs 11y agoJavascript size is a weird metric, and the plot is useless without context. The plot does not even state for which browser the metric was collected (or is it the repository size? That would be completely useless, as uBlock's and uBlock origin's repositories include versions for different browsers.) Because when I add the sum of all .js files in uBlock's repository, I get 1.08MB. Heck, the whole src and platform directories combined are 2.8MB, and that includes both the Chrome and the Firefox version! Can you point to a source for that plot?
- dvh 11y ago> The plot does not even state for which browser the metric was collected It's there in the title of the plot. Did you even looked at the plot? > Can you point to a source for that plot? I did the plot few days ago, I simply installed all those extensions and calculated JS size on disk.
- lucian1900 11y agoThe most straightforward alternative is the original Adblock Plus.
- LocalPCGuy 11y agouBlock Origin is better, Adblock Plus also does the acceptable ads program (they started it).
- raldi 11y agoThis Business Insider article seems to be a thin layer of blogspam around its more-informative source, http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/10/02/trust-us-we-block-ads/ http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/10/02/trust-us-we-block-ads/
- tempodox 11y agoAt least this article could be considered news. Other articles there stretch the definition of “news” beyond my tolerance.
- schandur 11y agoSeveral Business Insider articles are like that, which is why I almost always avoid opening BI links.
- beastman82 11y agowith a cringe-worthy, grammatically incorrect title
- monochromatic 11y agoIt's a little sloppy, but I don't think "got sold" is actually incorrect.
- porsupah 11y agoHaving been using Adblock for Safari for some time now, I'm a little apprehensive about this development. Thankfully, Adblock Plus (see above - distinct from Adblock) exists for Safari: https://adblockplus.org/en/safari https://adblockplus.org/en/safari Duly switched over.
- kuschku 11y agoAdBlock Plus does the same stuff, you might consider switching to uBlock for Safari.
- greatthanks 11y ago"Adblock Plus to Allow Independent Board to Decide Which Ads Are `Acceptable’ - Parent company Eyeo says it will no longer help decide which ads can pass through its filters" http://www.wsj.com/articles/adblock-plus-to-allow-independent-board-to-decide-which-ads-are-acceptable-1443553201 http://www.wsj.com/articles/adblock-plus-to-allow-independen... https://acceptableads.org/ https://acceptableads.org/
- kuschku 11y agoRight, because after making 30 million US$ with their "Acceptable Ads" program, they’re set for life: http://www.mobilegeeks.de/adblock-plus-zahltag-30-mio-von-amazon-ebay-google-und-yahoo/ http://www.mobilegeeks.de/adblock-plus-zahltag-30-mio-von-am...
- SEJeff 11y agoIt would be unbelievably obvious, yet ironic, if the "anonymous" buyer of Adblock ended up being an ad company. Why else would they want to remain anonymous?
- avn2109 11y agoThat was my first thought as well. This has to be either a consortium of advertisers or a single big player.
- SEJeff 11y agoMy thought would be Doubleclick^WGoogle^WAlphabet.
- arthurfm 11y ago... or Cheetah Mobile [1] perhaps? [1] http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/08/29/popular-photo-gallery-app-quickpic-has-been-bought-by-cheetah-mobile-and-users-are-pissed/ http://www.androidpolice.com/2015/08/29/popular-photo-galler...
- worldsayshi 11y agoLike Google?
- kuschku 11y agoLike what happened to AdBlockPlus, now being owned by UnitedInternet, the company that invented BinLayer (in-page pop-ups)?
- iscrewyou 11y agoAnd uninstalled. Are any of the adblockers open source? So, I can take a look at the code, and learn how they work.
- tempodox 11y agoBrowse GitHub.
- sp332 11y agoIt is open source. http://code.getadblock.com/releases/ http://code.getadblock.com/releases/ Edit: Found the right fork https://adblockplus.org/source https://adblockplus.org/source
- kzar 11y agoAs mentioned elsewhere in this discussion AdBlock is not Adblock Plus. The second link you posted is for the Adblock Plus source code. Unfortunately at the moment the AdBlock Git repository is not public, but I have set up this unofficial one that tracks the changes between each zip published on their releases page. https://github.com/kzar/watchadblock https://github.com/kzar/watchadblock Specifically if you want to see what they've changed so far have a look at the last couple of commits https://github.com/kzar/watchadblock/commit/afff2b47024f3a55783a8d67140c31250cc5a155 https://github.com/kzar/watchadblock/commit/afff2b47024f3a55... https://github.com/kzar/watchadblock/commit/f1f52f47e276d29e02eb93f947317c3073d5a0ea https://github.com/kzar/watchadblock/commit/f1f52f47e276d29e...
- treeefzz 11y agoBE VERY CAREFUL!!! I already used another popular extension, after a few months it was sold and the new owner just started to send EVERY PAGE users visited to his own servers!! This extension was blocked by Google, but it was waaaaaay too late and they was able to collected a lot of data from users like me.
- rhgraysonii 11y agoIf theres a Business Insider article worth reading, you find it Hunna Fresh.
- reiichiroh 11y agoOh no. I hope it's not Cheetah Mobile.
- amelius 11y agoThe next ad blocker will need to have a strong mission statement that excludes this type of behavior.
- wtallis 11y agoNah, people just need to go back to treating their adblocking software and their ruleset provider as separate things. Either your adblocker blocks what you tell it to, or it doesn't. There's not a lot of room for fishy behavior. The rulesets are where things are open to opinion and there are grey areas and they need a lot more maintenance and there's a lot of opportunity for abuse. EasyList and AdBlock shouldn't be synonymous, and users should be aware that they can opt to use something other than EasyList, and that they can make their own rules.
- beeboop 11y agoAnd this morning this extension gave me a popup saying they're going to have a default whitelisting going forward. Uninstalled and switched to uBlock.
- Sexagesimal 11y agoGoogle
- philtar 11y agoCurious why I can't offload this task to a DNS server? If such a solution truly doesn't exist (and I don't mean OpenDNS), would anyone like to talk about building something like that?
- JoshTriplett 11y ago> Curious why I can't offload this task to a DNS server? DNS doesn't provide nearly enough precision for ad blocking. Many servers serve both ads and content. Random example: some sites host actual non-ad video content on doubleclick.
- kuschku 11y agoCould you point me to an example of non-ad content doubleclick hosts? I haven’t ever seen such content before.
- JoshTriplett 11y agoLast time I looked through EasyList, it had some comments explicitly mentioning that they can't just block all of doubleclick because some sites (such as news sites) host their content videos there.
- djKianoosh 11y agoactually, just update your hosts file with something like this: http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
- winslow 11y agoWould putting it on the DNS work as expected? Hypothetical Example: Two websites have google ads WebsiteA and WebsiteB. I want to support websiteA by allowing google ads on there but not on WebsiteB. The only way to allow google ads to WebsiteA would be from the DNS which would also allow google ads to WebsiteB.
- pgl 11y agohttp://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=bindconfig http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=bind...
- reiichiroh 11y agoI donated initially when this came out because it was the only working Adblock for OS X Safari and Chrome at the beginning.
- benbojangles 11y agoI don't think adblocking has gone far enough. Adblocking for real life: http://noad-app.com/ http://noad-app.com/
- sivanmz 11y agoUgh. There was a time AdBlock made pleas for donations for this mom and pop operation that won't sell out, and I donated.
- somerandomness 11y agoironically "has announced via a pop-up to users"
- i336_ 11y agoI just append http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt to my /etc/hosts.