5 ms·

Block ads & third party trackers to spare your browser the useless effort. Thanks Adblock & Ghostery !

by liotier 12y ago

ljk 12y ago
Or using hosts file to block those IPs!
- PointerReaper 12y ago
  It would be interesting to see the same sort of diagram and discussion in the linked article that includes what happens when end users are using the AdBlock or Hosts block techniques.
  - kbuck 12y ago
    It's fairly simple: none of those steps happen, because since the advertiser's scripts and iframes are blocked, they don't even know you've loaded a page with an ad on it.
    - windsurfer 12y ago
      I've created code that test to see if ads are blocked based on failed-to-load scripts. I'm sure others have as well.
      - walterbell 12y ago
        Are you a publisher or advertiser?
        windsurfer 12y ago
        Neither, just a coder.
    - PointerReaper 12y ago
      Based on end-user experience during accessibility testing, I'm pretty sure they do detect the presence of tools such as AdBlock, test to see if certain elements were successfully provided before continuing with a specific set of ads, and also make some assumptions about providing "errors" to end users that only people with something like AdBlock or NoScript _should_ see.
      - hartator 12y ago
        They can't at all because nothing is loaded. Check the network tab of chrome with/without adblock enabled and you will see the difference.
        scholia 12y ago
        Nonetheless there are websites that give you a notice to say that you have AdBlock enabled, and some even tell you to disable it in order to use the site....
        hartator 12y ago
        Yes! But if you add the anti-Adblock script to Adblock, they won't work as well. (Doesn't mean the website will still work however!)
switzer 12y ago
The goal is for display ads to not suck to the point where Adblock, Adblock Plus, and Ghostery are required. For better or worse, advertising pays for the salaries of the people who write the stories and build the websites and apps that people use. The goal is not to remove ads altogether but to improve display advertising so that it is a positive improvement to a site rather than the negative effect that it has on user experience today (yes, advertising can be positive addition to content - ask anyone who reads Vogue magazine). Google won search advertising because ads were relevant, looked good, and it was simple for advertisers to reach the users they wanted. The major reason for Google's success is because they owned every piece in the advertising stack: - The content (e.g. google.com) - The adserver - The auction engine - Fraud detection (Google's quality team's success at removing fraud meant that advertisers trusted that their messages were reaching users) - Creative adserver (e.g. text ads and creatives are served by Google) In display advertising, each of these pieces is operated by a different party. This means that integration between each of the pieces is not a tight, giving users and advertisers a low quality experience. Here are some of the effects of this: 1. Ads generally cannot be tailored to the website where they run. Publishers do not have the ability to tailor ads to work within their environment like they can with Google Adsense (native advertising is starting to change this though) - so most websites look bad with display ads. 2. There is massive data leakage from ads. Because a 3rd party adserver is serving the ad on a publisher site, it is nearly impossible for publishers to keep their customer data from leaking to everyone in the ad stack, which quickly becomes everybody in the ad industry. Because ad networks that buy the publisher ad space from a publisher almost never actually serve the ad creative (they just serve an ad tag to another network), a massive circle of redirects where a single ad can be bought and sold over 100 times before an ad is displayed. This means that the publisher is giving their customer data to 100 companies before they get an ad on a page. 3. There is no industry wide coordinated ad fraud effort that is successful. There are so many ways for ad fraud to occur in many different parts of the ad stack, that a single company that tries to reduce fraud from a single point in the ad stack will only have limited success. 4. Ad creative does not have rigid controls where the publisher can let the advertiser know what can and cannot be done on their site. This means that either an ad seems to 'take over' the publisher page without adding to the user experience, or an ad is reduced to a backup image, which is not a pleasing experience. A reduced set of advertising features needs to be done much better in order for display advertising budgets grow from where they are now.
bigbugbag 12y ago
Don't you know that ghostery works for advertisers by providing them profiling info on people who black which ads so advertisers can better target them ? « Ghostery makes money by tracking the trackers while blocking them and selling data about third party trackers, which it calls Ghostrank. Disconnect takes a pay-what-you-want approach, but it is still developed by a for-profit company founded by a former Google engineer. Adblock is donation-supported, but many users confuse it with Adblock Plus, which has generated controversy for having advertisers pay to land on a whitelist. » http://finance.yahoo.com/news/not-ad-blockers-same-why-150015645.html http://finance.yahoo.com/news/not-ad-blockers-same-why-15001... see also: http://www.businessinsider.com/evidon-sells-ghostery-data-to-advertisers-2013-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/evidon-sells-ghostery-data-to... https://thetruthiswhere.wordpress.com/2014/11/30/ad-blocker-ghostery-actually-helps-advertisers-if-you-support-it/ https://thetruthiswhere.wordpress.com/2014/11/30/ad-blocker-... http://lifehacker.com/ad-blocking-extension-ghostery-actually-sells-data-to-a-514417864 http://lifehacker.com/ad-blocking-extension-ghostery-actuall... You may want to switch to eff's privacy badger: https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://www.eff.org/privacybadger Also have a look into mozilla's ligthbeam: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/lightbeam/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/lightbeam/ and request policy: https://www.requestpolicy.com/ https://www.requestpolicy.com/
- scholia 12y ago
  > Don't you know that ghostery works for advertisers by providing them profiling info Don't you know that "Ghostrank is off by default, meaning you can use Ghostery without sharing anything ... if you'd prefer". https://www.ghostery.com/en/faq https://www.ghostery.com/en/faq
  - bigbugbag 12y ago
    Nope, I didn't know that. I have to admit my knowledge of ghostery is not current as I quit using it not long after the privacy extension got bought by an advertising company. I was shocked that the option to support the extension turned out to be a spying tool for advertisers to design ads that users wouldn't want to block. I tried installing ghostery just now and ghostrank is indeed opt-in now. It is a good thing they upped their PR and changed their faq less than 6 months ago to make it clear how they make money, but they have lost my trust long ago and there's no coming back from that. Then again I wouldn't trust a company whose business is advertising with protecting my privacy and I definitely don't want better advertising, I want advertising to disappear from the web altogether as it was when i first started using it.

Block ads & third party trackers to spare your browser the useless effort. Thanks Adblock & Ghostery !

by liotier 12y ago

Block ads & third party trackers to spare your browser the useless effort. Thanks Adblock & Ghostery !

ljk 12y ago

Or using hosts file to block those IPs!

PointerReaper 12y ago
It would be interesting to see the same sort of diagram and discussion in the linked article that includes what happens when end users are using the AdBlock or Hosts block techniques.
- kbuck 12y ago
  It's fairly simple: none of those steps happen, because since the advertiser's scripts and iframes are blocked, they don't even know you've loaded a page with an ad on it.
  - windsurfer 12y ago
    I've created code that test to see if ads are blocked based on failed-to-load scripts. I'm sure others have as well.
    - walterbell 12y ago
      Are you a publisher or advertiser?
      - windsurfer 12y ago
        Neither, just a coder.
  - PointerReaper 12y ago
    Based on end-user experience during accessibility testing, I'm pretty sure they do detect the presence of tools such as AdBlock, test to see if certain elements were successfully provided before continuing with a specific set of ads, and also make some assumptions about providing "errors" to end users that only people with something like AdBlock or NoScript _should_ see.
    - hartator 12y ago
      They can't at all because nothing is loaded. Check the network tab of chrome with/without adblock enabled and you will see the difference.
      - scholia 12y ago
        Nonetheless there are websites that give you a notice to say that you have AdBlock enabled, and some even tell you to disable it in order to use the site....
        hartator 12y ago
        Yes! But if you add the anti-Adblock script to Adblock, they won't work as well. (Doesn't mean the website will still work however!)

switzer 12y ago

The goal is for display ads to not suck to the point where Adblock, Adblock Plus, and Ghostery are required. For better or worse, advertising pays for the salaries of the people who write the stories and build the websites and apps that people use. The goal is not to remove ads altogether but to improve display advertising so that it is a positive improvement to a site rather than the negative effect that it has on user experience today (yes, advertising can be positive addition to content - ask anyone who reads Vogue magazine). Google won search advertising because ads were relevant, looked good, and it was simple for advertisers to reach the users they wanted. The major reason for Google's success is because they owned every piece in the advertising stack: - The content (e.g. google.com) - The adserver - The auction engine - Fraud detection (Google's quality team's success at removing fraud meant that advertisers trusted that their messages were reaching users) - Creative adserver (e.g. text ads and creatives are served by Google) In display advertising, each of these pieces is operated by a different party. This means that integration between each of the pieces is not a tight, giving users and advertisers a low quality experience. Here are some of the effects of this: 1. Ads generally cannot be tailored to the website where they run. Publishers do not have the ability to tailor ads to work within their environment like they can with Google Adsense (native advertising is starting to change this though) - so most websites look bad with display ads. 2. There is massive data leakage from ads. Because a 3rd party adserver is serving the ad on a publisher site, it is nearly impossible for publishers to keep their customer data from leaking to everyone in the ad stack, which quickly becomes everybody in the ad industry. Because ad networks that buy the publisher ad space from a publisher almost never actually serve the ad creative (they just serve an ad tag to another network), a massive circle of redirects where a single ad can be bought and sold over 100 times before an ad is displayed. This means that the publisher is giving their customer data to 100 companies before they get an ad on a page. 3. There is no industry wide coordinated ad fraud effort that is successful. There are so many ways for ad fraud to occur in many different parts of the ad stack, that a single company that tries to reduce fraud from a single point in the ad stack will only have limited success. 4. Ad creative does not have rigid controls where the publisher can let the advertiser know what can and cannot be done on their site. This means that either an ad seems to 'take over' the publisher page without adding to the user experience, or an ad is reduced to a backup image, which is not a pleasing experience. A reduced set of advertising features needs to be done much better in order for display advertising budgets grow from where they are now.

bigbugbag 12y ago

Don't you know that ghostery works for advertisers by providing them profiling info on people who black which ads so advertisers can better target them ? « Ghostery makes money by tracking the trackers while blocking them and selling data about third party trackers, which it calls Ghostrank. Disconnect takes a pay-what-you-want approach, but it is still developed by a for-profit company founded by a former Google engineer. Adblock is donation-supported, but many users confuse it with Adblock Plus, which has generated controversy for having advertisers pay to land on a whitelist. » http://finance.yahoo.com/news/not-ad-blockers-same-why-150015645.html http://finance.yahoo.com/news/not-ad-blockers-same-why-15001... see also: http://www.businessinsider.com/evidon-sells-ghostery-data-to-advertisers-2013-6 http://www.businessinsider.com/evidon-sells-ghostery-data-to... https://thetruthiswhere.wordpress.com/2014/11/30/ad-blocker-ghostery-actually-helps-advertisers-if-you-support-it/ https://thetruthiswhere.wordpress.com/2014/11/30/ad-blocker-... http://lifehacker.com/ad-blocking-extension-ghostery-actually-sells-data-to-a-514417864 http://lifehacker.com/ad-blocking-extension-ghostery-actuall... You may want to switch to eff's privacy badger: https://www.eff.org/privacybadger https://www.eff.org/privacybadger Also have a look into mozilla's ligthbeam: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/lightbeam/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/lightbeam/ and request policy: https://www.requestpolicy.com/ https://www.requestpolicy.com/

scholia 12y ago
> Don't you know that ghostery works for advertisers by providing them profiling info Don't you know that "Ghostrank is off by default, meaning you can use Ghostery without sharing anything ... if you'd prefer". https://www.ghostery.com/en/faq https://www.ghostery.com/en/faq
- bigbugbag 12y ago
  Nope, I didn't know that. I have to admit my knowledge of ghostery is not current as I quit using it not long after the privacy extension got bought by an advertising company. I was shocked that the option to support the extension turned out to be a spying tool for advertisers to design ads that users wouldn't want to block. I tried installing ghostery just now and ghostrank is indeed opt-in now. It is a good thing they upped their PR and changed their faq less than 6 months ago to make it clear how they make money, but they have lost my trust long ago and there's no coming back from that. Then again I wouldn't trust a company whose business is advertising with protecting my privacy and I definitely don't want better advertising, I want advertising to disappear from the web altogether as it was when i first started using it.