Author Topic: Adblock Plus being paid to let certain ads through - Google, MS, Amazon!  (Read 22744 times)

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Offline Lisandro

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Re: Adblock Plus being paid to let certain ads through - Google, MS, Amazon!
« Reply #30 on: February 04, 2015, 10:33:34 PM »
I'm satisfied with AdBlock Plus, along with the filtersets Malware Domains, Easylist, and EasyPrivacy.  That combination along with MVPS hosts file means I don't see ads unless they are served from a domain that I've whitelisted.  I did uncheck the "Allow some non-intrusive advertising" in the AdBlock Plus interface.  I also use NoScript which blocks JavaScript and plugins including Adobe Flash, unless whitelisted.
Side note: uBlock seems to be faster and use much less resources than ABP.
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Offline polonus

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Re: Adblock Plus being paid to let certain ads through - Google, MS, Amazon!
« Reply #31 on: February 05, 2015, 12:06:32 AM »
Lisandro,

Thanks for your reaction.
You are definitely right there. It is very  lightweight and can load more subscription lists without slowing down the browser.
This thread is developing nicely, good info and good reactions to confirm some positions.
But I always thought the avast support forums hold a wealth of useful information for many.
Glad to be able to be part of it.  ;D

polonus
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Offline Charyb-0

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Re: Adblock Plus being paid to let certain ads through - Google, MS, Amazon!
« Reply #32 on: February 05, 2015, 01:13:42 AM »
Attached is my list. This is turning into a great topic.


One question and I would really appreciate your input. Does uBlock take care of web beacons/bugs or is there something else that needs used?

Offline Charyb-0

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Re: Adblock Plus being paid to let certain ads through - Google, MS, Amazon!
« Reply #33 on: February 05, 2015, 01:16:36 AM »

Here is some data regarding overhead comparing uBlock to AdBlock Plus. Keep in mind, this is from the developer.


https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/%C2%B5Block-vs.-ABP:-efficiency-compared
« Last Edit: February 05, 2015, 01:27:07 AM by Charyb »

Offline Lisandro

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Offline Rednose

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Re: Adblock Plus being paid to let certain ads through - Google, MS, Amazon!
« Reply #35 on: February 05, 2015, 01:38:23 AM »
One question and I would really appreciate your input. Does uBlock take care of web beacons/bugs or is there something else that needs used?

I know that MVPS also takes care of web bugs, but I am not sure what other lists do.

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Offline polonus

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Re: Adblock Plus being paid to let certain ads through - Google, MS, Amazon!
« Reply #36 on: February 05, 2015, 11:31:09 PM »
@Charyb

Web bugs are best treated by an extension like Disconnect.
So we always need a cocktail of web extensions to do the anti-tracking job versus cookies, ads, etc (minimal three extensions)
Next to uBlock:
HTTP Switchboard and ScriptSafe blocking can handle all issues for Google Chrome , like uBlock, NoScript and RequestPolicy do for firefox

HTTP Switchboard is so versatile it blocks tracking by default, but also all sort of items on demand - cookie - css - img - plugin - script -XHR - frame - other. Where I am writing this it blocks request for www.google-analytics.com, so 1 item and you can set some 11 more items to be blocked.
uBlock stops one request - similar as HTTP Switchboard and uBlock are from one and the same developer. The following sites know that you visited this page. Click on a site to find out what more it knows about you: google-analytics.com (this is the message for the forum page here at https://forums.avast.com).

polonus
« Last Edit: February 05, 2015, 11:58:02 PM by polonus »
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Offline polonus

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Re: Adblock Plus being paid to let certain ads through - Google, MS, Amazon!
« Reply #37 on: February 06, 2015, 02:49:38 PM »
Some observations about extension interaction with ScriptSafe in Google Chrome through other extensions, sometimes redirects from HTTP Switchboard and uBlock comes to be established earlier and I get a ScriptSafe extension alert from inside Google Chrome Managment (orange alert).
In the Golden Age of Tracking and Surveillance via your browser adblocking has many aspects of a reargard tussle.
First users protected themselves against cookies, in came more stealthier cookies and other ways like web beacons and even more devious ways.
Now we are in a phase where the adlaunching comes hard coded into the web browser outlay (tiles in firefox) because the average user won't avoid that by changing the about:config settings for json, or via special firewall settings.

When ads are your core business it is hard to offer a browser that is a user friendly browser in these respects  like the Google Chrome browser.

This would not be such a problem when there weren't millions and millions of malware ads that put the user at risk and Google has to stop.
This makes our look upon adblocking quite differently - adblocking is an integral part of the average user protection.

Adblocking necessare est! (Adblocking is a neccesity!)

I also observed that extensions work differently when I work Google Chrome inside sandboxie. Also a problem forms how Google protect the browser from extension interference, some lower layers in the browser  cannot be reached by developers, as Google does not allow it, so other ways around that should be sought or other ways to get the required outcome. HTTP Switchboard seems a clever concept here.

That a browser is meant to feed you ads like your parents tried to fed you cod liver oil in the evening in the 50's (open your mouth and hold your nose, now swallow) is shown when you find complete privavcy protection with no-script actively working a browser in tor. The browser may stop page loading and Google may start to feed you continuous captcha's to establish whether you are human (they apparently lost your tracking and monitoring trace slightly). Another way of pestering browser users that use tor is the continuous captcha's being thrown up from websites that come to us via CloudFlare. So all monopolists apparently are into the same game here.

Another example Google does not like adblockers was to block ABP app out from their Android platform where they had enough monopoly to dare and take such a position - take it or leave it. Existing Adblock users even had to change their smartphone proxy settings to make ABP would not stop functioning.

I could even find myself allright with the so-called non-intrusive ads, but I know malvertisers won't leave them alone, because they are a royal unobserved way into the browser (Google cannot guarantee the ads will be non-malvertised and there are more malcreants malvertising than Google's way to stop them or willingness to stop them, because cheap money from clean advertising and clickfraud SEO spam or malware injected ads is part of the same income stream).

polonus
« Last Edit: February 06, 2015, 03:19:31 PM by polonus »
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Offline polonus

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Re: Adblock Plus being paid to let certain ads through - Google, MS, Amazon!
« Reply #38 on: February 06, 2015, 05:22:51 PM »
Again we have to be realistic, my friends, and realize that only 8% of firefox users ever use adblocking in the browser.
The higher percentage is found with linux users where we come to percentages of 12 to 13 percent.
We have solutions like Adfender that runs in all browsers. But I do not know what ads they let slip by?

Chinese browser of choice, Maxthon, comes with in-built adblocking of sorts, and here we find some added suggestions:
http://forum.maxthon.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=5831&page=1#pid31392

What we found here on this thread that more users may adopt to adblocking.
Seems that our informed avast users do use some form of adblocking.
Avast evangelist that do not adblock, I hope there is no-one.
But it would be interesting to know how many do not have any adblocking installed  :o

Here the opposite postion of those that see ad-, script- and track-blocking as the three forks of the devil:
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/adblock-noscript-ghostery-trifecta-evil-opinion/

Added in UBlock: https://secure.fanboy.co.nz/r/fanboy-ultimate.txt

On -http://www.bidnessetc.com/  ABP blocks 0 and uBlock blocks 2. Further blocking through HTTP Switchboad possible.

polonus
« Last Edit: February 06, 2015, 05:39:01 PM by polonus »
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Offline polonus

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Re: Adblock Plus being paid to let certain ads through - Google, MS, Amazon!
« Reply #39 on: February 06, 2015, 05:46:04 PM »
In ScriptSafe I get this alert inside Google Chrome browser:
Quote
Warning:
This extension could not divert a network request to about:blank while another extension  (HTTP Switchboard) redirected the request to data:text/html,%3C!DOCTYPE%20html%3E%3Chtml%3E%3Chead%3E%3Cstyle%3E%40font-face%7Bfont-family%3Ahttpsb%3Bfont-style%3Anormal%3Bfont-weight%3A400%3Bsrc%3Alocal(%22httpsb%22)%2Curl(%22chrome-extension%3A%2F%2Fmghdpehejfekicfjcdbfofhcmnjhgaag%2Fcss%2Ffonts%2FRoboto_Condensed%2FRobotoCondensed-Regular.ttf%22)%20format(%22truetype%22)%3B%7Dbody%7Bmargin%3A0%3Bborder%3A0%3Bpadding%3A0%3Bfont%3A13px%20httpsb%2Csans-serif%3B%7D%23bg%7Bborder%3A1px%20dotted%20%23cc0000%3Bposition%3Aabsolute%3Btop%3A0%3Bright%3A0%3Bbottom%3A0%3Bleft%3A0%3Bbackground-color%3Atransparent%3Bbackground-size%3A10px%2010px%3Bbackground-image%3Arepeating-linear-gradient(-45deg%2C%23cc0000%2C%23cc0000%2024%25%2Ctransparent%2025%25%2Ctransparent%2049%25%2C%23cc0000%2050%25%2C%23cc0000%2074%25%2Ctransparent%2075%25%2Ctransparent)%3Bopacity%3A1.0%3Btext-align%3Acenter%3B%7D%23bg%20%3E%20div%7Bdisplay%3Ainline-block%3Bbackground-color%3Argba(255%2C255%2C255%2C1)%3B%7D%23bg%20%3E%20div%20%3E%20a%20%7Bpadding%3A0%202px%3Bdisplay%3Ainline-block%3Bcolor%3Awhite%3Bbackground-color%3A%23cc0000%3Btext-decoration%3Anone%3B%7D%3C%2Fstyle%3E%3Ctitle%3EBlocked%20by%20HTTPSB%3C%2Ftitle%3E%3C%2Fhead%3E%3Cbody%20title%3D%22%26ldquo%3BwXw.firstpost.com%26rdquo%3B%20frame%0Ablocked%20by%20HTTP%20Switchboard%22%3E%3Cdiv%20id%3D%22bg%22%3E%3Cdiv%3E%3Ca%20href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2FwXw.firstpost.com%2Fpromo%2Fbusiness_widget.html%22%20target%3D%22_blank%22%3EwXw.firstpost.com%3C%2Fa%3E%3C%2Fdiv%3E%3C%2Fdiv%3E%3C%2Fbody%3E%3C%2Fhtml%3E.

Allowed in incognitomode
 
Installed

Anyone?

polonus

P.S. Tracker SSL warns: At least 4 third parties know you are on this webpage.

-fonts.googleapis.com  Google
 -s1.firstpost.in
 i-mg-d01.moneycontrol.co.in
 -www.firstbiz.com
 
Damian
« Last Edit: February 06, 2015, 05:50:11 PM by polonus »
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Offline polonus

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Offline polonus

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Re: Adblock Plus being paid to let certain ads through - Google, MS, Amazon!
« Reply #41 on: February 08, 2015, 11:17:49 PM »
Hi my dear avast users,

Re: https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=165934.msg1181627#new
Another interesting link there developing on this subject, where our good bob3160 gives us a direct link to add uBlock add-on to the  firefox browser: http://www.wilderssecurity.com/threads/ublock-ublock-for-firefox.371397/
Firefox does not give it on their official add-on install listing, because of obvious reasons, you could well imagine.
Now firefox revenues are from donations,  circumvented ads, tiled ads that come hard-coded in their browser and with the latest ABP version you can also donate to the makers of ABP. I thought ABP makers had enough ad-related income from the non-instrusive ads they let through unhindered/unnoticed via their German bureau.
I am glad I now have uBlock running inside firefox and it works like a charm. Some say it is not a genuine adblocker, but "if something swims like an adblocker, quacks like an adblocker to me it is an adblocker"....  ;D

polonus

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Offline Tia

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Re: Adblock Plus being paid to let certain ads through - Google, MS, Amazon!
« Reply #42 on: February 09, 2015, 06:57:16 AM »
Adblock being paid is very old news. You are quite late to this party.

Still, its relatively easy to create custom rules in adblock, just find the offending element and block it globally.

Offline polonus

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Re: Adblock Plus being paid to let certain ads through - Google, MS, Amazon!
« Reply #43 on: February 09, 2015, 09:23:07 AM »
Hu Tia,

This news resurged with an articile in the Financial Times, that has shown new light on the enterprise behind ABP in Germany.
What you mention was already known also to me, the so-called whitelisting of non-intrusive ads. That it goes far beyond this with exclusivity for big players like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo etc, was not known so far. Next to that ABP aks for user donations in firefox.
Time for me to switch to uBlock.

polonus
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Offline Asyn

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Re: Adblock Plus being paid to let certain ads through - Google, MS, Amazon!
« Reply #44 on: February 09, 2015, 09:48:23 AM »
Next to that ABP aks for user donations in firefox.

polonus
Hi Pol, haven't seen it so far. Out of interest, could you please post a screenshot..!?
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