avatar_mandru

Sick of web sites with intrusive ads?

Started by mandru, October 12, 2016, 09:01:17 AM

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mandru

Lately I've been plagued by increasingly aggressive ads while trying to access the site I use to play my daily morning crossword puzzle.  I'll admit up front that the site wants paying members but allows free membership with the condition that it comes at the cost of having game play interrupted for frequent ad brakes.

At times the ads have been so problematic that they would redirect me away from the site or crash the site out altogether forcing me to have to login again and on other occasions they'd trigger my anti-virus to jump in and temporarily lock down my access to the site to avoid infection.  It was getting to the point that I was on the verge of giving up on the web site altogether in frustration that they were refusing to police and enforce the ad servers that were ruining the site for non-paying users.

Imagine the frustration of a hijacking ad overriding a site's formatted 30 second ad slot and dumping in a 2400 second (40 minutes) ad of pure BS esoteric social justice warrior campaign with no escape other than closing out the game and reloading it.  The nightmare of this is because the ad server pushing that crap is receiving premium payment for delivering it means it's prioritized and that the odds are high that you'll get that same ad again on the next ad break.  :D

Then I saw a post on a forum where the conversational thread was complaining about web sites and ad servers not screening their content as they were more interested in cash flow than protecting the recipients from the content they were delivering.  I was able to sieve a gem out of the discussion.

Firefox browser users are able to (through the Mange your add-ons icon (puzzle piece)) go to the Get Add-Ons tab and at the bottom of the page is a link to "See more Add-ons" which when clicked brings up another page that has a search bar.  From there you can search for and apply the uBlock Origin extension.

When using the Search bar if you put in uBlock there will be several results with two of them under the name uBlock.  Be sure to select uBlock Origin .  Of those two versions uBlock Origin is user rated at 5 stars and is a newer release as well as authored by a different person than the search result under the name uBlock which only gets 4 stars.

For me this layer of protection has brought about a difference of day and night in my browsing experience.  Not only has the site where I get my morning crossword been accelerated but there's none of the typical redirects, pop-ups or glitch-outs and crashes caused by the ads.  Even the ever present top and side ad banners are simply gone.

It also appears that this add-on blocks nosy 3rd party snoops that some web sites allow to search your cookies.  I'm led to think this as there have been times where after reading a long article on such a site that I've noticed the related icon in the toolbar keeps a running tally of the number of times it has interceded against intrusions.  Typically when loading some web pages there will a veritable parade of non-related web locations in the lower left corner of my browser.  I think those are businesses that get to access my info (cookies, location and such) before my content is served.  It looks like uBlock Origin is screening them and denying them access because my loading times have improved drastically.  I've seen times where the interception count after one of those aforementioned long articles has been as high as 150 blocks.  :o

I'm pleased to say that here on squeaky clean OWG there has never been a recorded intrusion that has been detected since I've deployed this add-on.  Way to go PZ!  Thanks!  ^-^  :-X

After a test period of three days and not seeing a single ad from any off site server and experiencing zero abnormal behavior from my system I explained what I had done and showed this change (and the easy steps of how to control it if the need arises) to Mrs. mandru by going to the game site where I get my crossword and opened up one of several other games there that she plays regularly to let her see the difference.

When asked if she wanted it applied to her computer she insisted that I apply it to her browser and was instantly tickled with the results.

So pleased in fact that she switched that night's planned dinner menu from a quick fix box dinner of mac-and-cheese with an added can of generic chili to one of my favorites, pork loin chops in Marsala sauce with garlic mashed potatoes and steamed cauliflower.  ^-^
- mandru
Gramma said "Never turn your back 'till you've cut their heads off"

nexor

Thanks for this one mandru +1
I'm installing and setting it up right now  :-X

OWGKID

I'm currently using Ad-Block so far. Browsing the web is much more cleaner now :)  :-X
LEGACY

mandru

Nex, let me know what you think or if your experience matches mine.  :-X

OWGKID, I was looking at and tried to use Ad-Block a couple years ago but had to give up on it as Firefox kept disabling it as incompatible.  Recently I'd heard (in that forum I mentioned for where I found this ad blocker) that Ad-Block while effective runs their own ads, banners and nags to get you to upgrade to their pay version.  That's what steered me in choosing this option at this time.

I will admit the claim about them running their own ads may have been false info about Ad-Block as I never looked back into it to verify.  If so you can set me straight on that matter.  :)
- mandru
Gramma said "Never turn your back 'till you've cut their heads off"

OWGKID

Never noticed that for me. I'm using the Chrome browser and I have never seen Adblock displaying their own ads.
LEGACY

nexor

Haven't used it much since installing it mandru, but I noticed the difference immediatly, no more ads :-D

fragger

I started using Firefox's Ad-Block about a year ago and never looked back. I got sick to death of never being able to watch Youtube videos without having to sit through the same mind-numbing ads that I got bombarded with on TV (whenever I watch TV that is, which isn't often). Ad-Block made Youtube, and browsing in general, way more enjoyable.

I can't say I've ever seen Ad-Block running their own ads, I've found it to be completely unobtrusive.

Art Blade

I've been using noscript forever and uBlockOrigin ever since adblock started to allow stuff.
[titlebar]Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.[/titlebar]What doesn't kill us, makes us weirder.

PZ


mandru

- mandru
Gramma said "Never turn your back 'till you've cut their heads off"

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