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Oof, what? Toolbars were painfully visible, but spam extensions are just as common today. The difference is that today you can get them straight from the comfor

Oof, what? Toolbars were painfully visible, but spam extensions are just as common today. The difference is that today you can get them straight from the comfort of the top search result for any innocuous term. The web today, without an ad blocker, is just as land-mined as it’s always been. And getting your spam code installed is super easy, barely an inconvenience.

sdfghswe 4y ago
> The web today, without an ad blocker, is just as land-mined as it’s always been. No dude. From this comment I would say that you're either too young to have living the toolbars that parents is mentioning, or too in your own bubble to know the kind of people who would fall for it.
- nneonneo 4y ago
  Extensions are potentially worse - they can be quite hidden while still doing naughty things to your browsing history or even the pages you visit.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    That's what toolbars did.
    - j16sdiz 4y ago
      and toolbars are not sandboxed. Back in those days, nothing (except java) in the browser is sandboxed.
  - sdfghswe 4y ago
    Oh you think that all "toolbars" are visible. That's so endearing.
- StrangeATractor 4y ago
  Anyone else remember having their mom's boyfriend getting you to remove the animated porn lady walking on top of the windows bar while explaining that he had no idea how that got there?
  - jorvi 4y ago
    VirtuaGirl. I made a good chunk of money in my small town being the computer repair guy (well, kid). Just you referring to that blight brought up memories of my entire digital youth. Having my parents shepherd my and my PC to friends so we could LAN, Hamachi (virtual LAN), Kazaa, Limewire / Frostwire, Azareus / uTorrent, uHARC compressed games, jailbreaking iPhones, writing my own hooks for d3dx9.dll for cheating on games.. good times. Specifically with Azareus vs. uTorrent I remember being amazed how a program that was a few hundred kilobytes could principally do the same thing as one that was a few hundred megabytes big, and with 1/10th of the RAM consumption to boot. It’s given me a lifelong impression of Java being a sluggish crappy language, which isn’t factually correct.. but first impressions last. Strangely enough I have a feeling we (‘90s kids) were the last generation where every kid had to learn at least some digital nimbleness. These days even the cracks and jailbreaks are one-click and work without a fault.
    - tyre 4y ago
      starting digital life on Parental Control AOL with only keywords true hardmode
      - brewtide 4y ago
        So many blank discs to tape over and save things on in the mailbox. Then the unlimited supply of coasters following. I knew a guy that had a free trial of AOL for 5 plus years because he's call and threaten to cancel his service - which eventually turned into "listen, Ive been with you folks for 3 plus years now, and I'd really hate to cancel my service now but..." Bam, another free 6 month window. I still find it hilarious. Who else rocked qlink ? We're getting there now...
    - monetus 4y ago
- INTPenis 4y ago
  I think it kinda evens out because while the web is better, more people are using it. If I look at just the experience I've had these last 20 years I'd say nothing has changed overall. Because my mom got her Samsung phone infected from official Google ads. And who do you report that to? They don't care. If she didn't have someone who could identify she had a malicious program and reset her phone she'd just live her life with constant ads popping up randomly.
- HeavyFeather 4y ago
  VirtuaGirl wasn’t nearly as bad as that quiet extension mining bitcoins and syphoning your dad’s passwords in the background. Flashy != dangerous. Heck today viruses don’t even limit themselves to restarting your computer, they encrypt your files and blackmail entire hospitals. So yeah no, things did not get better at all.
ashton314 4y ago
> super easy, barely an inconvenience Wow wow wow wow wow wow. I see we have another Ryan George fan here.
zamnos 4y ago
This thread really needs pictures. https://www.wintips.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/image_thumb50.png https://www.wintips.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/image_thu... is what you'd come home from college to find on the family computer. Getting ads on individual pages is limited to that site. Those dual search bars are slurping up every web request and sending it on to its master.
- romanhn 4y ago
  That's if you were lucky. You could also come home to this: https://imgur.io/X7ipc?r https://imgur.io/X7ipc?r
  - zamnos 4y ago
    where's the scream emoji when you need it? the other thing to note is just how spoiled we are with monitors these days. $400 for a giant fat pile of screen real estate, on something the thickness of a book (adjust the kind of book for the kind of monitor you have). Back in days of yore, monitors were CRTs. Deep and heavy, and with poor resolution. it's only recently we've been able to get exquisite 4k (or higher!) monitors, which meant that losing any screen real estate hurt plenty.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
dx034 4y ago
It seems to me that few people today actually use extensions. They're hard to find in browsers (in Chrome you need to go through several clicks) and have warnings installing them. I'm always surprised to find that many non-technical people I know don't use any extensions at all. But that's probably intended, Google doesn't seem to like them anyway (esp Adblock).

sdfghswe 4y ago

> The web today, without an ad blocker, is just as land-mined as it’s always been. No dude. From this comment I would say that you're either too young to have living the toolbars that parents is mentioning, or too in your own bubble to know the kind of people who would fall for it.

nneonneo 4y ago
Extensions are potentially worse - they can be quite hidden while still doing naughty things to your browsing history or even the pages you visit.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  That's what toolbars did.
  - j16sdiz 4y ago
    and toolbars are not sandboxed. Back in those days, nothing (except java) in the browser is sandboxed.
- sdfghswe 4y ago
  Oh you think that all "toolbars" are visible. That's so endearing.
StrangeATractor 4y ago
Anyone else remember having their mom's boyfriend getting you to remove the animated porn lady walking on top of the windows bar while explaining that he had no idea how that got there?
- jorvi 4y ago
  VirtuaGirl. I made a good chunk of money in my small town being the computer repair guy (well, kid). Just you referring to that blight brought up memories of my entire digital youth. Having my parents shepherd my and my PC to friends so we could LAN, Hamachi (virtual LAN), Kazaa, Limewire / Frostwire, Azareus / uTorrent, uHARC compressed games, jailbreaking iPhones, writing my own hooks for d3dx9.dll for cheating on games.. good times. Specifically with Azareus vs. uTorrent I remember being amazed how a program that was a few hundred kilobytes could principally do the same thing as one that was a few hundred megabytes big, and with 1/10th of the RAM consumption to boot. It’s given me a lifelong impression of Java being a sluggish crappy language, which isn’t factually correct.. but first impressions last. Strangely enough I have a feeling we (‘90s kids) were the last generation where every kid had to learn at least some digital nimbleness. These days even the cracks and jailbreaks are one-click and work without a fault.
  - tyre 4y ago
    starting digital life on Parental Control AOL with only keywords true hardmode
    - brewtide 4y ago
      So many blank discs to tape over and save things on in the mailbox. Then the unlimited supply of coasters following. I knew a guy that had a free trial of AOL for 5 plus years because he's call and threaten to cancel his service - which eventually turned into "listen, Ive been with you folks for 3 plus years now, and I'd really hate to cancel my service now but..." Bam, another free 6 month window. I still find it hilarious. Who else rocked qlink ? We're getting there now...
  - monetus 4y ago
INTPenis 4y ago
I think it kinda evens out because while the web is better, more people are using it. If I look at just the experience I've had these last 20 years I'd say nothing has changed overall. Because my mom got her Samsung phone infected from official Google ads. And who do you report that to? They don't care. If she didn't have someone who could identify she had a malicious program and reset her phone she'd just live her life with constant ads popping up randomly.
HeavyFeather 4y ago
VirtuaGirl wasn’t nearly as bad as that quiet extension mining bitcoins and syphoning your dad’s passwords in the background. Flashy != dangerous. Heck today viruses don’t even limit themselves to restarting your computer, they encrypt your files and blackmail entire hospitals. So yeah no, things did not get better at all.

ashton314 4y ago

> super easy, barely an inconvenience Wow wow wow wow wow wow. I see we have another Ryan George fan here.

zamnos 4y ago

This thread really needs pictures. https://www.wintips.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/image_thumb50.png https://www.wintips.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/image_thu... is what you'd come home from college to find on the family computer. Getting ads on individual pages is limited to that site. Those dual search bars are slurping up every web request and sending it on to its master.

romanhn 4y ago
That's if you were lucky. You could also come home to this: https://imgur.io/X7ipc?r https://imgur.io/X7ipc?r
- zamnos 4y ago
  where's the scream emoji when you need it? the other thing to note is just how spoiled we are with monitors these days. $400 for a giant fat pile of screen real estate, on something the thickness of a book (adjust the kind of book for the kind of monitor you have). Back in days of yore, monitors were CRTs. Deep and heavy, and with poor resolution. it's only recently we've been able to get exquisite 4k (or higher!) monitors, which meant that losing any screen real estate hurt plenty.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

dx034 4y ago

It seems to me that few people today actually use extensions. They're hard to find in browsers (in Chrome you need to go through several clicks) and have warnings installing them. I'm always surprised to find that many non-technical people I know don't use any extensions at all. But that's probably intended, Google doesn't seem to like them anyway (esp Adblock).