6 ms·

This extension made no sense anyway! Clicking every single ad is bound to get you so many tracking cookies and give up so much metadata about your browsing tha

• babesh 10y ago
  I think the idea is that the ad networks then don't have any idea what you are actually interested in. The problem from Google's side is that it is pay per click for the advertiser so advertisers are paying for these fake clicks.
  • Someone1234 10y ago
    It can also cause Google to ban sites from Adsense. Google will ban a site from hosting Adsense ads if Google believes that the site's operators are generating fake clicks. The way they detect this is a trade secret, but many sites have gotten arbitrarily banned after users seemingly clicked ads artificially in a misguided attempt to help the site. This extension will no doubt be used by a certain subset of users. Those same users may use some sites in a disproportionate number, that could result in people's favorite sites getting banned and losing the ad revenue that keeps the lights on. I don't actually think this extension is "bad" or "wrong" just might have unintended side effects.
    • mthoodlum 10y ago
      Google harms website operators based on the actions of third-parties. Third-parties are to blame.
      • Someone1234 10y ago
        Is re-stating what I said above really constructive? Yes, that's what might happen. You may not like it, but that's the reality of the situation.
        • mthoodlum 10y ago
          I think blaming third parties in this scenario is silly and Google should be broken up.
    • mcguire 10y ago
      "It can also cause Google to ban sites from Adsense." If you object to ads, is that a bad thing?
      • purple-again 10y ago
        Yes. I'm happy using the site with Adblock. I would be unhappy if they shut down because all of their revenue was lost. I'm aware of the implied hypocrisy but I'm content because I'm unwilling to continue using the product with ads. Under the current system I am able to have my cake and eat it too.
• dest 10y ago
  Doesn't AdNauseam provide extra revenue for the websites you browse? (at least temporarily, with fixed PPC rates)
  • deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
• problems 10y ago
  > btw if you're using this plugin on Firefox, enjoy the exploits that your browser downloads and runs in the background by clicking every ad! :-D It doesn't download or run anything. Just clicks links without even rendering the response, pretty small attack surface there I'd say.
  • Someone1234 10y ago
    Also pretty easy to detect/block. Just add a redirect that redirects on page draw after the click. Only record clicks that successfully redirect.
    • problems 10y ago
      Yeah, it might make for slightly weird flow when clicking ads, but you could totally do it. So instead of doing that and being respectful and competitive Google decided to ban the extension.
      • dpark 10y ago
        "Respectful" is a really bizarre expectation since this plugin by its nature does not respect Google's or other ad networks. I don't know why Google would demonstrate respect to a plugin designed to damage their ad network.
        • problems 10y ago
          Because other browser vendors would accept such a plugin as they're not ad networks. This seems to me very much like a case of Google being too big, having their hands in both the ad market and the browser market and abusing that position. Respect may not have been the right word, but I was going for "not a blatant abuse of power".
          • dpark 10y ago
            I'm not very sympathetic to click fraud. Almost no one would think it acceptable if a site owner were using a click farm to artificially inflate the ad click through rate, but somehow a browser extension doing the same is okay? I have no problem with ad blocking but actively poisoning the network is a different thing entirely. If Google decided to block users of AdNauseum and similar plugins from using Google web products, you'd probably say it's blatant abuse of power and I'd say it sounds reasonable, exactly as it's reasonable for sites to block users running ad blockers.
• nacs 10y ago
  > is bound to get you so many tracking cookies I just installed the extension on Chrome and it seems to block the cookies on those requests. There's also a setting in their settings panel that mentions blocking cookies (checked by default).
  • dguido 10y ago
    Even without explicit cookies, many ad networks use cookieless fingerprinting (e.g., https://amiunique.org/ https://amiunique.org/) to uniquely identify you or, at minimum, your IP address. You give up a considerable amount of your own privacy and browsing habits by using this plugin.
    • grive 10y ago
      And why would this plugin help cookieless fingerprinting? This is just another baseless statement. The explicit purpose of this plugin is to make the signal disappear within the noise. Explain what "considerable amount of one's own privacy and browsing habits" this plugin exposes, or stop spreading FUD because you are ideologically opposed to it.
• 0xADADA 10y ago
  You'd be advised to read their book, by Nissenbaum and Brunton that describes the theory behind privacy through obfuscation. It argues that by clicking all the ads, all useful information is lost in the noise. Simply put, the signal-to-noise ratio is so heavily biased to noise that the signal is lost. https://www.amazon.com/Obfuscation-Users-Guide-Privacy-Protest/dp/0262529866/ref=sr_1_1/151-1720456-9382733?ie=UTF8&qid=1487086183&sr=8-1&keywords=obfuscation+privacy https://www.amazon.com/Obfuscation-Users-Guide-Privacy-Prote...
  • dguido 10y ago
    Neither of these people are technologists with any experience in the ad industry or data science. They're lawyers and artists. Why would I trust that they know what they're talking about in this domain?
    • stult 10y ago
      Why not evaluate their arguments on the merits rather than relying on authority (or lack thereof)? And it's not like this is a particularly technical subject anyway.
      • dguido 10y ago
        Absolutely, and I've outlined cases where I have technical disagreements with them in my original post and elsewhere in this thread. I was merely responding to the accusation that I should blindly listen to them because they wrote a book.
      • mattmanser 10y ago
        How is it not technical? You have to understand statistics, ad networks, etc. plus all the stuff that can be used to identify you online, cookies, e-tags, browser storage, browser property sniffing, etc. plus how all that works in regard to domains and sub-domains, what's accessible cross-domains, etc. The parent is alluding to that while all that ad clicking might obfuscate your reception to ads, it might have the downside of making it extremely easy to distinctly recognise your browsing habits and let every ad network uniquely identify you and link it to other data they have on you.
• Bartweiss 10y ago
  Ad Nauseum's explanation page addresses this question. They're supposed to be triggering sandboxed requests that never return to your browser, and so aren't a threat. It was my first concern too, and I still wouldn't be comfortable to run it, but it's not as though the security question was unaddressed. (I do object to the possibility of getting your favorite sites blacklisted by ad networks for low-intent clickthroughs or botting.)
  • hrodriguez 10y ago
    > I do object to the possibility of getting your favorite sites blacklisted by ad networks for low-intent clickthroughs or botting. Haven't installed the extension for these two reasons. Also, while I strongly believe that the tech industry re: surveillance, data-mining and data-sharing is completely out of control and deserving of a tool like this... I'm not ready to cross this line and become this kind of activist for change. There's a war going on and our online rights to privacy have been completely stripped away - with things getting so much worse. As a result, I do understand others using this extension and hope that this tool (among others, especially long-needed legislation which the government opposes) changes things for the better. Whitelisting/Blacklisting could help solve the fav sites issue but it defeats the purpose of this extension when there is so much at stake.
• wnevets 10y ago
  > enjoy the exploits that your browser downloads and runs in the background by clicking every ad! :-D this just comes off as FUD, do you have a code example of this?
  • stephenr 10y ago
    Ad Networks are well known to be common targets for malware distributing shit bags.
    • wnevets 10y ago
      Absolutely but that doesn't automatically mean the firefox plugin is vulnerable to such malware.
      • stephenr 10y ago
        The plugin makes your browser "click" the links, no? It's running in your browser, it's as vulnerable as if you clicked on every single ad you see, no?
        • wnevets 10y ago
          Not if the plugin is able to run the request in some sort of sandboxed environment.