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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

#41

Post by chalst »

bencollier49 wrote: post #29

Doesn't claiming that Adblock is "malicious" come under the remit of libel laws?

I haven't found that exact claim on the site. It does list these blockers as "Liste von bekannten seitenmanipulierenden Add-ons" (known site-manipulating add-ons) [2] and on the main page "Diese seitenmanipulierenden Add-ons stellen ein erhebliches Sicherheitsrisiko für Sie dar!" (these site-manipulating add-ons put you in a situation of increased security risk) [1]. Together, these two assertions might be libellous, but because they are not together, I guess it is not as straightforward as the words of Michael Büker's post suggests.

[1]: http://www.browsersicherheit.info

[2]: http://www.browsersicherheit.info/addons.html

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

#42

Post by Spittie »

_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?

It's not in the EU (Switzerland), but https://mykolab.com/

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

#43

Post by adrianmn »

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 to start a dispute if piracy is good or bad just wanted to express an opinion on ad blockers that many seem to miss.

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

#44

Post by microtonal »

PavlovsCat wrote: post #34
Filligree wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, except that many users want full indexing of e-mails, including attachments, such that they can use an AJAX web interface to quickly search them.

So, storing all e-mails encrypted is not really feasible if you want to have such features as well [1]. It's a trade-off - convenience or security (I am sure someone will site Benjamin Franklin now ;)).

[1] Yes, I know that there is work on indexing encrypted data.

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

#45

Post by chii »

kefka wrote: post #35
Filligree wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

is this really happening? can you give some evidence that google is willy nilly giving private data away like that?

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

#46

Post by mschuster91 »

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…

Manitu is great, they're cheap and provide excellent support, for urgent stuff like dead disks even free in the night...

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

#47

Post by mschuster91 »

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…

The problem is that without adblockers the web is basically useless due to too many publishers becoming too greedy and torturing their users with sometimes dozens of layer,banner,popup,popunder and scareware ads on one(!) page.

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

#48

Post by sweedy »

some years ago i worked for 1 & 1, and when I think back to their customers, i can imagine that it would work. And I see the reason also because they were one of the first to have offered in Germany emails that were in vain financed by massive advertising, and AdBlock is certainly no fun for them. Just to compare, this looks my Landing Page with, and without AdBlock.. http://i.imgur.com/bgTCRJN.png

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

#49

Post by chii »

DanBC wrote: post #26
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 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

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

#50

Post by chii »

DanBC wrote: post #26
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 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

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