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

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

#141

Post by bdcravens »

drchaos wrote: post #112
engtech wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not much better, arguably worse. If my intention was to go to Amazon.com, they're now "helping" me and writing a cookie that wouldn't have been there, and earning $ in the process. A bare WWW request should never result in affiliate income.

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

#142

Post by dekz »

https://adblockplus.org/blog/typo-correction-feature-in-adbl...

>Whenever typo correction brings you to the site of a large online shop an affiliate ID will be added to the address. This makes sure that if you buy something there we get a small amount of money from the shop.

Mentioned on their website.

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

#143

Post by DanBC »

bdcravens wrote: post #141
drchaos wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not much better, arguably worse. If my intention was to go to Amazon.com, they're now "helping" me and writing a cookie that wouldn't have been there, and earning $ in the process. A bare WWW request should never result in affiliate income.

I tend to agree with you, but I'd be happy for Pinterest to convert any non-affiliate links to affiliate links. They'd need to make it very clear what they were doing before doing it.

I get value from Pinterest's collection, so I'm happy for them to skim a little bit of money from my purchase. Shopping is hellish, and Pinterest makes it easier for me.

I am aware that they got into trouble for using skimlinks to convert links. (I think they were converting affiliate links to their affiliate links which is pretty dodgy.)

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

#144

Post by fuzzywalrus »

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)

Thanks, I was getting mighty confused about adblock and thinking, "I didn't think this was even a German property"

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

#145

Post by dfc »

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.

Exactly this? WTF? The "this" response was bad enough as it was. Now we are lowering the SNR even more by prepending "Exactly"?

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

#146

Post by HarshaThota »

orourkek wrote: post #87
criley2 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if I need every single website hooked into Google Ads, all of them reminding me that I'm single, trying to sell me clothes, trying to sell me dating websites, trying to predict what I want in life. It's invasive, and quite frankly, it's disturbing and creepy that the same advertisements follow me regardless of website. I feel like the guy in Pachebel's Rant, finding Canon in D across modern music, except what I'm…

FYI, you can change some settings for google ads[1] so that you're not shown targeted ads at all (for example). You can also block ads to have them and related ads never be shown again. [1] https://www.google.com/ads/preferences

Google also has an add-on if you want to opt out from Google Analytics.

[1] https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout

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

#147

Post by Shivetya »

bad_user wrote: post #45

I cannot verify the claims, but I'll state the reasons once again about why I'm not using ad blockers: 1) free websites and web services need revenue and as long as the ads are tasteful, I don't mind them 2) I actually want websites to annoy me with lots of stupid ads, as I want to stop using such websites, because I want to reward publishers that don't do that Ad blockers are trying to fix a symptom of the disease a…

I too do not mind "tasteful" ads but unfortunately being a gamer leads me to man game related sites I do not trust and for good reason. More than once I have read postings where ad servers were hacked to server malicious items and more than once it was suggested the site operators didn't care. Fortunately being on a Mac as well as defaulting to strict blocking has protected me in every case.

I would not mind a solution that provides trusted ads. A system by which I can inspect what the site is trying to feed me and whitelist what I am willing to deal with.

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

#148

Post by rustynails »

bad_user wrote: post #45

I cannot verify the claims, but I'll state the reasons once again about why I'm not using ad blockers: 1) free websites and web services need revenue and as long as the ads are tasteful, I don't mind them 2) I actually want websites to annoy me with lots of stupid ads, as I want to stop using such websites, because I want to reward publishers that don't do that Ad blockers are trying to fix a symptom of the disease a…

Malware is also delivered by ads, a very important reason to block ads.

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

#149

Post by MichaelGG »

dfc wrote: post #145
ianlevesque wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Exactly this? WTF? The "this" response was bad enough as it was. Now we are lowering the SNR even more by prepending "Exactly"?

s/Exactly this/I agree

Or eliminate it. He provided a small comment afterwards, and the replies to that comment are good. Not what I'd call noise.

Your comment and my response however...

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