Okay, I see the appeal of sticking it to the man (in this case, the privacy invading tracking agency). If I could have an addon that _reliably_ hides my web bro

Okay, I see the appeal of sticking it to the man (in this case, the privacy invading tracking agency). If I could have an addon that _reliably_ hides my web browsing habits from advertisers and evil government agencies while making their life harder, that would be cool. I just do not see how this act of online vigilantism is going to change things or help. The cost that merchants encounter are opaque, they have mostly no control over the publishing side, if they even know where their ads are shown at all. So, advertising gets more expensive, but as one commentator here said: "I must advertise, else I will have no sales at all." Lastly, to click on an ad, the user will most likely need to execute the javascript associated with the ad. At that moment, they already have been tracked, and any malicious drive-by-downloads will run on their machine. Clicking on all ads you encounter will just make your browsing trail that much wider (user reads HackerNews, browses late in the morning, stays long on sites with cat memes), and your unique browser footprint will be associated cross device with your profile so you get more targeted ads on your mobile devices.