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The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

standard.co.uk

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Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#101

Post by happybuy »

madars wrote: post #71

Or, in other words, FBI now recommends using Android :-) It's baffling how much better uBlock Origin + Firefox experience on Android is compared to any iOS ad blocker I have tried. They kind-of work but let half of the ads through.

I develop a popular iOS and macOS ad blocker that block almost all ads[1] including all YouTube ads.

Will be interested to hear if you've tried it out and what may have been missing?

The only things we don't block at the moment is some non-English content and Adult sites. With a small team these haven't been the primary focus for the time being. Other than those though we should stop pretty much everything else.

[1] https://www.magiclasso.co/

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#102

Post by thefourthchime »

layer8 wrote: post #96
madars wrote: post #71

Or, in other words, FBI now recommends using Android :-) It's baffling how much better uBlock Origin + Firefox experience on Android is compared to any iOS ad blocker I have tried. They kind-of work but let half of the ads through.

AdGuard Pro works pretty well for me on iOS.

Yeah, it works well for me as well. I see zero ads.

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#103

Post by layer8 »

mlindner wrote: post #83
madars wrote: post #71

Or, in other words, FBI now recommends using Android :-) It's baffling how much better uBlock Origin + Firefox experience on Android is compared to any iOS ad blocker I have tried. They kind-of work but let half of the ads through.

Do all the people who use computers to browse the internet (the majority of people on the internet) suddenly no longer exist?

Mobile internet usage overtook desktop towards the end of 2016. Currently mobile usage sits at about 65% worldwide (slightly below 60% in the US).

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#106

Post by paxys »

Those who are a bit tech minded – consider adding DNS filtering on your home network (using pi-hole or something else). It has drastically changed my web experience for the better, including across iPhone apps, smart TVs and other surfaces where ad blockers can't help.

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#107

Post by ryanianian »

happybuy wrote: post #101
madars wrote: post #71

Or, in other words, FBI now recommends using Android :-) It's baffling how much better uBlock Origin + Firefox experience on Android is compared to any iOS ad blocker I have tried. They kind-of work but let half of the ads through.

I develop a popular iOS and macOS ad blocker that block almost all ads[1] including all YouTube ads. Will be interested to hear if you've tried it out and what may have been missing? The only things we don't block at the moment is some non-English content and Adult sites. With a small team these haven't been the primary focus for the time being. Other than those though we should stop pretty much everything else. [1]…

Hey thanks for Magic Lasso. I've had it installed for years. Only after starting my app library from fresh did I realize how much I missed it (and it took me quite a while to figure out and remember that it was magiclasso doing the heavy lifting - easy to install and forget!)

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#109

Post by krackers »

autoexec wrote: post #88
bogwog wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All I care about is hiding/obfuscating my personal information. I just don’t like the idea of giving that away for free, even if it’s actually harmless. I don’t care if I get wrongly labeled/categorized due to this. It’s not like my profile was an accurate representation of who I am before I turned on ad nauseam. If someone gets dragged into a court room for clicking ads, that would be funny, and I doubt they would h…

> All I care about is hiding/obfuscating my personal information. adnauseam does not do this. It only adds to your personal information. It doesn't hide anything. > I don’t care if I get wrongly labeled/categorized due to this. Then you must not care when you suffer the consequences of having been wrongly labeled/categorized. Nobody can make you care about yourself, your money, your safety, or your time if you refuse…

>It's about quantity not quality

Right: regardless of what the ad is, just by auto-clicking on it you provide a signal that when aggregated together can roughly piece together your browsing history. As a toy scenario, maybe you only visit tech blogs, and tech blogs usually have tech related advertisements. The fact that you have auto-clicked on ads that were on tech sites, and not say fashion sites, is itself a strong signal that can be used to infer browsing history.

Also I think advertisers are already used to dealing with click fraud and so track metrics that won't meaningfully be impacted by this strategy.

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#110

Post by whydoyoucare »

eurticket wrote: post #58
TacticalCoder wrote: post #36

Here are a few things I do to combat nasty websites: - blacklists entire domains using wildcards (using an "unbound" DNS resolver and forcing all traffic to my DNS resolver, preventing my browser to use DoH -- I can still then use DoH if I want, from unbound) - reject or drop a huge number of known bad actors, regularly updated: they go into gigantic "ip sets" firewall rules - (I came up with this one): use a little…

Steven Black runs a hosts file on GitHub with regular updates. https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts There are a bunch of file variants to weed out specific bad actors. It's well currated though I will disclaimer it has broken a few websites in the past for me. Maybe that's a good thing.

I use https://oisd.nl/ which has reasonably curated list on my router with unbound. Works pretty good.
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