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

FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022)

ic3.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 238 posts

Re: FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022)

#181

Post by chithanh »

gerdesj wrote: post #57
azinman2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The changes Apple made were to increase privacy. Content blockers that have access to the page have no network access. A separate process that does can only update the blocking rules. I quite like Ka-block

"The changes Apple made were to increase privacy" Apple gobbles personal data too and processes it and sells it etc. They are simply rather better at looking ... friendly. They really are very good at that.

I don't think Apple (or Google, Microsoft, …) sells your data. Or can you point me to the website where I can buy user data from them?

What I would admit is that Apple is maybe not as motivated to protect your data from unintentional leaking. Without user data, Google would be almost nothing. So they have to be extremely careful to maintain the trust of their users. For Apple (or Microsoft) their business is still sizeable enough with out user data.

Re: FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022)

#182

Post by stogot »

internetter wrote: post #41
hirvi74 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the GP you are asking, but I do not use an ad blocker because I predominantly use Safari as my browser. I would absolutely love one, but after Apple made all those API changes years back, I gave up trying to find one that works well and is privacy friendly.

Check this out: https://kaylees.site/wipr.html . It's no UBlock Origin, but it still does an excellent job on many sites.

How do I know tools like this don’t send data home? Does Apple’s API work in a specific way to deny that?

Re: FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022)

#183

Post by shiroiushi »

defrost wrote: post #158
shiroiushi wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your point. You say you want to change the culture, and that this has successfully been done in the case of crime, but this is blatantly false: every country has prisons with many criminals in them. In the US in particular (since most HNers probably live there), there are well over 1 million people in custody according to a quick google search, and over 5 million in corrections (so I assume most of…

> You say you want to change the culture, and that this has successfully been done in the case of crime, No. They did not. They explicity said "mostly works". > but this is blatantly false: Of course it is. You set up a blantantly false strawman. Please don't use obviously piss weak rhetorical tactics, they make you look bad. > every country has prisons with many criminals And every country has varying incarceration…

>Again, there are no one size fits all answers and people aren't homogenous.

That was my exact point with the previous post blaming "software engineers" for ads.

Re: FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022)

#184

Post by shiroiushi »

ryandrake wrote: post #157
shiroiushi wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not bad faith at all. He's trying to use a collective blame argument: "software engineers" as a group are supposedly to blame for adware, in his argument, rather than a small minority of software engineers. It's absolutely no different than blaming all for the crimes committed by a few members, and paint them all with the same brush.

Just to clarify what I mean is it is a little bit of both: 1. Our profession is collectively allowing this by not having a widely agreed-upon ethical standard for conduct, and 2. (some) Individuals are actively doing it by actually building the bombardment code. I feel the same way about software for war fighting, which obviously has higher stakes. The profession itself doesn't push back on the ethics of it AND indiv…

>1. Our profession is collectively allowing this by not having a widely agreed-upon ethical standard for conduct,

You're acting like the profession has some kind of central authority. It does not. It's like asking for agreed-upon ethical standards for dog walkers; you're not going to get it, because there's nothing resembling a centralized organization, nor any kind of licensing for this profession.

>I feel the same way about software for war fighting,

If you want to eliminate software for war fighting, this is a fool's errand. Weapons for war are absolutely necessary, unless you want to be a victim to some dictator who doesn't agree with your ethical principles. History is full of examples of peaceful people who couldn't withstand an assault by other people who didn't believe in peace. In fact, I'd go so far as to claim that eliminating warfare (and the military apparatus for it: armies and navies etc.) is impossible as long as separate countries exist. Only if we manage to either conquer everyone or get everyone to agree to join a single planetary government can war really be eliminated. And that assumes that hostile aliens won't ever be a problem.

Re: FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022)

#185

Post by shiroiushi »

juanani wrote: post #171
hunter2_ wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you ever make a purchase due to having seen an ad, ideally by clicking on the ad? If not, then in some sense you're still getting something without paying for it. (You're paying with your time, but that's not valuable to anyone unless it ultimately results in paying with money.) But better to screw the people pushing ads than the content creators!

I personally have a long list of products not to buy. If you somehow repeat the same ad and I remember your product, I stop buying said product. If youre wasting your money on spamming ads, your product sure as shit isnt better than competitors', since they waste less on ads, more on product. I dont use ad blockers, they make it harder for me to find out who has the poorer product.

Wow, that sounds like a ton of work. I think a better idea is to use an ad-blocker, but run a program in the background that downloads the ads (or maybe just samples them, to save bandwidth and resources), processes them to find brand names, and then stores these brand names in a database so you can find their relative frequency and assign a score to each. Then you can just query the db when you want to buy something to find that brand's acceptability score.

Re: FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022)

#186

Post by oska »

shiroiushi wrote: post #139
BadHumans wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree with their overall point but this is an either oblivious or bad faith take on their statement.

No, it's not bad faith at all. He's trying to use a collective blame argument: "software engineers" as a group are supposedly to blame for adware, in his argument, rather than a small minority of software engineers. It's absolutely no different than blaming all for the crimes committed by a few members, and paint them all with the same brush.

> It's absolutely no different than blaming all for the crimes committed by a few members, and paint them all with the same brush.

Members of a minority group, such as race or religion or sexual orientation are generally members of that group by birth, not by choice.

Members of the group 'software engineers' are members of that group by (career) choice.

Re: FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022)

#187

Post by shiroiushi »

dahart wrote: post #101
gerdesj wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The changes Apple made were to increase privacy" Apple gobbles personal data too and processes it and sells it etc. They are simply rather better at looking ... friendly. They really are very good at that.

> Apple gobbles personal data too What data and how do you know? This seems to be a popular talking point, but I’ve yet to see evidence. It doesn’t make that much sense to frame Apple’s privacy stance as similar to Google’s or Facebook’s. Apple isn’t an ad business, and Google and Facebook are, plain and simple. I don’t work for Apple, and I don’t use an Apple laptop or desktop, but I don’t buy this Apple is as bad a…

>I’m sure they’re not perfect, but I feel like Apple is relatively serious about privacy, making real changes that generally protect consumers

Then why do they push their crappy browser on iOS which doesn't allow ad-blockers?

Re: FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022)

#188

Post by Tanoc »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #77
shkkmo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the numbers of times I've had to disable ad blocker to fix some janky page I have to use, I don't think installing an ad blocker without explaining or even mentioning it is a friendly act.

I don't think it happened to me, but then I don't venture outside Amazon, Newegg.. major sites that much. But even then.. if they need all those crazy redirects, maybe they don't want my business.

If you ever limit the number of redirects to one in Firefox by using about:config, you'll see that most sites do at least two per page. It makes me wonder how many useless portals there actually are just because people glue together CDNs and add more off-site frameworks like Akamai and Typekit.

Re: FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022)

#189

Post by gitaarik »

hirvi74 wrote: post #29
Waterluvian wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That feels like a pretty fair approach. If you don’t mind, I’m truly curious why you don’t Adblock? There’s no wrong answer here. ;)

Not the GP you are asking, but I do not use an ad blocker because I predominantly use Safari as my browser. I would absolutely love one, but after Apple made all those API changes years back, I gave up trying to find one that works well and is privacy friendly.

Why don't you just use a different browser that gives you more control?

Re: FBI recommends using an ad blocker (2022)

#190

Post by bravetraveler »

Zambyte wrote: post #123
giancarlostoro wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a confession to make. I don't really have ad-block. If your site is too ad-infested, I stop using it.

This is one thing I really like about Kagi - I don't have to remember which sites to not use due to ads, I simply add the site to my account-wide block list, and I never see it in search results again.

One can achieve the same thing for any website, not just their search results, with the browser extension 'uBlock'.

Yes, you have to write a pattern. It saves you money while not supporting the erosion of autonomy. What's better than free vegetables? Delivery.

I'm away from my computer right now but I'll copy one of mine later/reply with it. The edit window here is unfortunate.

Post reply on HN