Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Adblock Plus “typo correction” feature adds affiliate IDs to links

translate.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 180 posts

Re: Adblock Plus “typo correction” feature adds affiliate IDs to links

#111

Post by edwintorok »

Tobu wrote: post #104
edwintorok wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it seems to be default off, and they're not hiding the fact that this is a monetization source: https://adblockplus.org/blog/typo-correction-feature-in-adbl... However it appears to add that tag only if I typo the name, if I follow a good Amazon link (with or without the affiliate) then it doesn't get 'corrected'. Although since the rewrite rules are downloaded from a remote location (over HTTP, not even HTTPS!)…

While they could update the list, it's still typo correction. As implemented, the url needs to be typed in the location bar and the domain can't exist. Edit: sorry about that last part. http://amazon.co does exist and does get corrected.

IIRC I've seen it suggest me typo corrections even when visiting valid websites.

Re: Adblock Plus “typo correction” feature adds affiliate IDs to links

#112

Post by drchaos »

engtech wrote: post #95
philtar wrote: post #23

Can anyone actually confirm this?

You have to enable the typo option and the amazon referrer rewrite happens. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5946194

I think the word "rewrite" is misleading in that context. ABP does not rewrite existing referrers (which would in fact be "mafia style"), instead it adds its own referrer when correcting/rewriting links with a typo:

  amazon.com/?tag=someReferrer will not be changed 
  amazon.comm will be rewritten to amazon.com/?tag=uf024-20

Re: Adblock Plus “typo correction” feature adds affiliate IDs to links

#113

Post by Retric »

cletus wrote: post #86

The essence of this is you need to decide the answer to two questions: 1. What are your personal ethics? 2. Who do you trust? To put (1) in context, the content on the Internet is largely provided free but is ad-supported. When it comes to display advertising, it's sold almost entirely on a CPM basis (it may be resold on an eCPC or eCPA basis). It is at best only partially sold on an intent basis (meaning it's entici…

I think Adblock is a reasonable choice as I woulda rather have micropayments for content vs advertising. However, I mostly browse on an iPad which does not seem to have any add block options.

Re: Adblock Plus “typo correction” feature adds affiliate IDs to links

#114

Post by janfoeh »

[deleted] wrote: post #108
janfoeh wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a typo. Here is a manual translation of the paragraph containing the allegation: Schaut man sich den Quellcode von Adblock Plus an, dann stolpert man ueber die “typoRules.js”" welche Vertipper in der Adresszeile des Browsers ueber eine dann nachgeladene Datei http://urlfixer.org/download/rules.json korrigiert. Den Spass gibt es uebrigens auch als separates Add-On http://urlfixer.org, ebenfalls vom feinen Her…

[deleted]

How so?

Re: Adblock Plus “typo correction” feature adds affiliate IDs to links

#115

Post by jimm »

ianlevesque wrote: post #88
mtrimpe wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started blocking ads less than a year ago because of YouTube's pre-roll advertisements, since I'm perfectly capable of filtering out text based ads but a format that requires me to watch the ad to be able to view the content without letting me pay them is a deal-breaker for me. Is it really that hard to let me pay a monthly fee to turn ads off? Google is serving the vast majority of ads online and they already have…

Exactly this. Everyone needs to offer the option to pay in some way. If we could pay for a bundle of all sites even better.

If you're old enough to remember the start of cable TV, one of the promises was that it would have few/no commercials, because you're paying for it.

I'd trust very few web sites to stay ad-free if they switched to a pay model. The money is just too good for them.

Re: Adblock Plus “typo correction” feature adds affiliate IDs to links

#116

Post by ianlevesque »

jacques_chester wrote: post #105
ianlevesque wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a growing segment of users that just don't want advertising in their faces, period. Thankfully a not-insignificant portion of these are willing to pay for it through subscriptions on sites that offer this. Not enough sites offer this. I envision an "ad network" appearing eventually that doesn't display any ads, just distributes revenues from an aggregate subscription. Then sites can still be supported by spon…

This idea has been around for a while; I call it "microsubscription". Several companies have tried and failed to make a go of it. Kachingle is still limping along, though fatally hamstrung itself by picking a dumb, public fight with the New York Times . As I said in reply to another of your comments, I've been working on the technology to make it possible to do this reliably for some time now. It's harder than it loo…

Very interesting. I figured someone must have tried it but hadn't found examples. Kachingle looks like a deeply flawed implementation of it.

What were the others?

Re: Adblock Plus “typo correction” feature adds affiliate IDs to links

#117

Post by claudius »

mjn wrote: post #38
sdfjkl wrote: post #3

So what's a good alternative (Firefox)? I'm using GlimmerBlocker, but due to being a proxy, it can't filter HTTPS pages. Adblock Edge looks like a decrapified fork of Adblock Plus.

I use the venerable (but still actively maintained) Privoxy, which is a proxy but still does most of what I want on HTTPS pages. It can't examine the page contents themselves, but it can block 3rd-party requests by hostname, which gets most of the web-bugs and such.

I had some problems with loading times/pipelining in Opera (12.x) and Privoxy and hence changed to AdBlock (which appears to be the same as AdBlock Chrome referred to above). Browsing became much smoother afterwards.

Re: Adblock Plus “typo correction” feature adds affiliate IDs to links

#118

Post by nathan_long »

colkassad wrote: post #16
0x0 wrote: post #14

Is this in any way related to the "AdBlock" extension (not "...plus")? https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/adblock/gighmmpiob...

Apparently not: "AdBlock is not to be confused with Adblock Plus. The developer of AdBlock for Chrome claims to have been inspired by AdBlock Plus, which is a community supported development effort, but otherwise the two efforts are unrelated."[1] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AdBlock_(Chrome)

Correct. Adblock is supported by donations only.

https://chromeadblock.com/pay/

Re: Adblock Plus “typo correction” feature adds affiliate IDs to links

#119

Post by aroch »

cletus wrote: post #86

The essence of this is you need to decide the answer to two questions: 1. What are your personal ethics? 2. Who do you trust? To put (1) in context, the content on the Internet is largely provided free but is ad-supported. When it comes to display advertising, it's sold almost entirely on a CPM basis (it may be resold on an eCPC or eCPA basis). It is at best only partially sold on an intent basis (meaning it's entici…

>Recently there was a story about Ghostery reselling user data to advertisers [3]. How much can you really trust these basically unaccountable groups (in comparison)?

Except all the data collected and sold was opt-in and they told you it was anonymized and sold on the page next to the opt-in checkbox

Re: Adblock Plus “typo correction” feature adds affiliate IDs to links

#120

Post by Tichy »

cletus wrote: post #86

The essence of this is you need to decide the answer to two questions: 1. What are your personal ethics? 2. Who do you trust? To put (1) in context, the content on the Internet is largely provided free but is ad-supported. When it comes to display advertising, it's sold almost entirely on a CPM basis (it may be resold on an eCPC or eCPA basis). It is at best only partially sold on an intent basis (meaning it's entici…

At the end of the day the ads hurt my brain. I don't think you can really block them out mentally, as you claim. Can you block out really loud noise, for example? I don't think the brain works that way. You might think you blocked something out mentally, but you would probably still have increased stress levels.

I don't really feel unethical for using Ad Blockers. I don't think watching ads is the same as paying. I figure ads are about statistics and advertisers count on only reaching part of the audience. Since I definitely never click on ads, I am not part of that target audience (except for the unavoidable minor brainwashing).

I might still help out a site owner by recommending their site, thus attracting other people who might then click on ads.

I am not responsible for a site owners business model, either.

In the age of AdWords I figure pay-per-view ads must be very rare?

Post reply on HN