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German freemail sites trick Firefox and Chrome users into removing AdBlock

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Re: German freemail sites trick Firefox and Chrome users into removing AdBlock

#131

Post by mindslight »

netrus wrote: post #110
mindslight wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has used an ad blocker for over 10 years, I have a strong opinion about the ad industry. Die out, go away, and let us get back to the point where the motivation to publish something on the 'net stems from the desire to share knowledge. To hell with the cacophonous status quo of doing the bare minimum to trick people into giving you their attention in order to fill their head with garbage for a fraction…

I dont get your comment. Not content delivery is expensive, but content creation Do you want a net without professional journalism?! Or do you prefer paywalls? Or donations? I am in favor of a great coordinated blackout campaign by the large content providers. Dont want to see ads? Fine, pay a dollar via Paypal to see the site - or go away.

The sheer majority of 'professional journalism' consists of:

1. Rewording press releases from industry/government. The actual writers of this content are being paid by industry/government, and the content itself is essentially an ad.

2. Soap opera designed to provoke fear or controversy, both "political" and not (see #1)

3. Emotional tourism fluff pieces to steal attention (see my original comment)

4. Pumping the latest startup fad (see #1)

5. Self-important circle jerks about the 'knowledge economy' and other superiority-assured deck chair distractions on the USSG (see #1)

6. Rewording of actual information that was not created by a journalist to be "more accessible", with the end result being a distorted oversimplification. This is essentially a subcase of #3 where the emotion is superficial "understanding".

7. Direct copying ("excerpts") of other 'professional journalism' with a link back, ad infinitum.

So no, I'm not terribly worried about losing something we don't actually have.

The occasional story that has genuine public interest (eg the hard facts about NSA) would be reported by concerned parties anyway. I doubt many of those ad views are paying the actual reporter, Snowden, who acted out of moral imperative. And while I'm happy the journalist middlemen are working to keep public attention on this subject, this is only necessary from being in a zero sum game with the above. These middlemen are actually delaying, redacting, and muddling specific technical facts on the current state of NSA's malevolence that would be quite nice for us to know.

Re: German freemail sites trick Firefox and Chrome users into removing AdBlock

#132

Post by cal2 »

nollidge wrote: post #111
teleclimber wrote: post #102

This shows very clearly why browser warnings (aka "permission infobars") that are embedded on the page are bad. http://chromespot.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/screen_quot... By getting the user accustomed to seeing browser warnings and info there, you make it impossible for them to distinguish a legit browser warning from a fake one crafted by an unscrupulous site owner. Browser warnings and notifications should si…

Similarly, this is a major problem with Chrome showing settings in a browser page.

Thanks for bringing these two things to my attention. It's incredible what I can overlook in tools I use everyday. I love it when I learn something new though!

Re: German freemail sites trick Firefox and Chrome users into removing AdBlock

#133

Post by mason240 »

__david__ wrote: post #118
mason240 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should modify your browsing habits to only include sites without ads then.

Should the blind modify their browsing habits to only include sites that have built in audio transcriptions? Or, perchance, is it the right of every website viewer to consume the website in the way they deem most fit?

You're really going to equate your annoyance with ads with being blind?

Re: German freemail sites trick Firefox and Chrome users into removing AdBlock

#134

Post by DanBC »

mason240 wrote: post #87
DanBC wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand it. Someone has said that they do not view advertising. They have modified their browser to avoid ads. A marketer choses to ignore that person's choice and choses to use tricky technical means to ignore that person's wishes in order to show an ad. How is that in any way beneficial to the product being advertised? I am ad tolerant (don't run ad blockers etc) but behaviour like that fills me with rag…

You should modify your browsing habits to only include sites without ads then.

Personally, I do. When I see a stupid annoying ad I stop using the site and I write to them to politely let them know.

(Exception: imgur is showing some ads that launch the ap store. These ads are really freaking annoying and it feels like a bug.)

Re: German freemail sites trick Firefox and Chrome users into removing AdBlock

#135

Post by chrischen »

iancarroll wrote: post #95
eik3_de wrote: post #15

This is so embarrassing and disgusting. For reference, here's a list of United Internet properties to avoid: 1&1 (aka 1and1.com) GMX WEB.DE InterNetX united-domains Sedo mail.com Fasthosts affilinet Arsys

Has anyone had bad experiences with sedo? I haven't.

I have. They accused me of offering a bid to myself (I didn't) and made no recourse to defend myself.

Re: German freemail sites trick Firefox and Chrome users into removing AdBlock

#136

Post by mistercow »

There's only one appropriate response to this from browser vendors: add those sites with to the malicious site list so that they show the big "danger ahead" warning when you visit them.

This kind of social engineering approach to removing an extension is not significantly different from a browser exploit that achieves the same result.

Re: German freemail sites trick Firefox and Chrome users into removing AdBlock

#137

Post by mistercow »

adrianmn wrote: post #43

As someone that has been involved in online publishing for over 10 years I have a strong opinion about ad blockers. In my opinion using ad blockers is borderline piracy. Refusing the content creator his revenue by blocking his ads is little different than downloading music, books... without rewarding the creator. On top of that most of the quality content this days is on websites that have decent ads. I am not trying…

As someone who has paid for advertising on websites, I'm happy that some of the users who are definitely not going to click on the ad aren't served them.

But beyond that, this is pretty irrelevant to the topic at hand. However you feel about ad blockers, tricking people into turning them off is still completely unacceptable.

Re: German freemail sites trick Firefox and Chrome users into removing AdBlock

#138

Post by mistercow »

chii wrote: post #49
DanBC wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand it. Someone has said that they do not view advertising. They have modified their browser to avoid ads. A marketer choses to ignore that person's choice and choses to use tricky technical means to ignore that person's wishes in order to show an ad. How is that in any way beneficial to the product being advertised? I am ad tolerant (don't run ad blockers etc) but behaviour like that fills me with rag…

> How is that in any way beneficial to the product being advertised? it isn't. But the clients of the advertisers cannot really have a say in this - the measurements of ad effectiveness tend to be done with impressions. They are optimizing for a metric that doesn't completely align with the goals of advertising

Or as stated in Goodhart's law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Re: German freemail sites trick Firefox and Chrome users into removing AdBlock

#139

Post by mistercow »

userbinator wrote: post #33
mediumdeviation wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't it be detectable? Ad blockers do their job by removing elements from the page, blocking requests to URLs that match those used to serve advertisements, or a combination both, and either one of those are easily detectable by client-side JavaScript.

Then perhaps a different method should be used - although removing all the stuff that makes up adverts is one way to do it (and often does make for faster page loads and lower bandwidth consumption), if the end goal is the user just doesn't want to see them, maybe that's what we should do: everything except render certain elements. (There's also the alternative of targeting the scripts that do this; an anti-anti-adbl…

How would you do that in a way that wouldn't be detectable to the original page? The only way I can see would be at the browser level, not the extension level.

Re: German freemail sites trick Firefox and Chrome users into removing AdBlock

#140

Post by mistercow »

antr wrote: post #5
Cenk wrote: post #2

Disgraceful. One of the providers, web.de, also sends it’s users emails with advertisements which cannot be disabled or marked as spam.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain't_no_such_thing_as_a...

That's not really what TANSTAAFL means. It's about opportunity cost and externalities, not bait and switch tactics.
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