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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

#31

Post by josephlord »

_quasimodo wrote: post #8
mironathetin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Confirmed. I use web.de since 1998 as a spam-box, to keep my real account clean. During the last years they indeed try all tricks (we have a present for you, 3 weeks of free membership blah, blah..). If you leave this page now, the present will expire. There is a way to simply ignore this sh..t. All of it. But I agree that it takes discipline (germans are good at that :o). Gmail, on the other hand, cannot be trusted…

Can you recommend a paid european mail service?

I'm using EUMX.net with large mailboxes and no problems so far. They seem to be quite a small company although very helpful when responding to email which they do with 24 hours.

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

#32

Post by Filligree »

belorn wrote: post #22
microtonal wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or googles snooping in your data and selling your profile to everyone who pays. You should really read Google's privacy policy: http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/ So, no, they don't sell your profile. I do agree with your point: if you don't want advertisements. Pay for the service. E.g. Google Apps for domains allows you to disable adds in Google apps. And since you can bring your own domain, you can move to so…

An non-binding policy, how quaint! http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/contractsprof_blog/2010/08/... Even if you trusted such things, google will still do targeted ads. If DEA want to find drug users, all they have to do is ask google and they will use users emails to locate them.

Yes, Google will comply with law enforcement.

Uh... what would you prefer they do instead?

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

#33

Post by userbinator »

mediumdeviation wrote: post #30
userbinator wrote: post #25

What I don't get is why something like AdBlock should even be detectable... Incidentally, I remember reading before that Germany had the largest percentage of users using AdBlock, so it makes sense that the pushback is starting here.

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-adblock! Reminds me of the arms race between malware attempting to prevent itself from reverse-engineering via detecting debuggers and such, and the opponents coming up with anti-anti-debugging, leading to anti-anti-anti, and so forth...)

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

#34

Post by PavlovsCat »

Filligree wrote: post #32
belorn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An non-binding policy, how quaint! http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/contractsprof_blog/2010/08/... Even if you trusted such things, google will still do targeted ads. If DEA want to find drug users, all they have to do is ask google and they will use users emails to locate them.

Yes , Google will comply with law enforcement. Uh... what would you prefer they do instead?

Avoid collecting such information in the first place, which of course would require a different business model, which brings us back to the initial point.

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

#35

Post by kefka »

Filligree wrote: post #32
belorn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An non-binding policy, how quaint! http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/contractsprof_blog/2010/08/... Even if you trusted such things, google will still do targeted ads. If DEA want to find drug users, all they have to do is ask google and they will use users emails to locate them.

Yes , Google will comply with law enforcement. Uh... what would you prefer they do instead?

There is a big difference between:

1. Here is a lawful search warrant signed affidavit and approved by a judge _or_

2. Here you go, the data on kefka. Thanks for asking.

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

#36

Post by slipstream- »

shimfish wrote: post #28
userbinator wrote: post #25

What I don't get is why something like AdBlock should even be detectable... Incidentally, I remember reading before that Germany had the largest percentage of users using AdBlock, so it makes sense that the pushback is starting here.

I drove myself insane for a morning recently when I couldn't work out why a site of mine that had happily been working for years suddenly stopped displaying some images in the carousel. They were there in the HTML but Chrome reckoned they were zero size. Eventually, it hit me that I should try turning off adblock. Turns out, I had called the imgs containg divs "#ad1", "#ad2". "#ad3", etc were all fine for some reason…

I once had to use a method like this to detect adblock to specificially deny a somewhat intrusive ad from being displayed, as adblock screwed it up enough that it wouldn't close.

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

#38

Post by PavlovsCat »

leonhandreke wrote: post #23
_quasimodo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you recommend a paid european mail service?

As was already said, any webhosting package with email will do. Here is a selection of hosters in Germany that I find have a clean website an pricing structure and therefore feel less cheap and more trustworthy to me. Hetzner: One of the bigger provider for hosting in Germany. They have their own datacenters in Bavaria. Manitu: Smaller, they also have their own datacenter. schokokeks.org: Small service run by a few t…

Speaking of small services run by a few techies: For what it's worth, I like bytecamp.net. I'm not affiliated with them, other than being a super happy customer for nearly 10 years :)

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

#40

Post by inanov »

inanov wrote: post #39

> The requested URL / was not found on this server. webpages at http://browsersicherheit.info/ seems to be removed. http://web.archive.org/web/20140226224721/http://www.browser... says that adblock "Filters page content"

apparently they just removed the website index

http://www.browsersicherheit.info/addons.html

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