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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

#71
post #4

oh web.de easily the most dangerous free mail sites there is. it belongs to 1&1[1] one of the bigger internet companies in germany. it's really odd that no one ever shot them down. they are famous for tricking users into shady 2 year contracts, if they wanted to upgrade their 12 mb mailbox. they also upgraded the freemail to 500mb if and only if you would install their browser toolbar, which would change the mail ser…

mail.com recently had their outbound servers listed on Spamhaus for the best part of a week.

I noticed as a mail.com user was trying to email me and the message was being rejected, saw the spamhaus listing in my logs. Asked the sender, and they said that their messages to gmail were going into spam too.

I emailed postmaster@, support@, sysadmin@ etc. to try and inform them, as well as trying two contact forms; never heard anything back and it took several more days for the listing to disappear.

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

#72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a publisher and advertiser problem as they did not create an ad relevant and/or engaging enough. With retargeting ads this days it becomes easier to show relevant and targeted ads. Actually most HN-ers are leaving huge money on the table right now for not using the highest ROI ad channel - retargeting.

I am one hundred percent sure I have not ever intentionally clicked on or even looked at an ad, nor do I ever intend to, regardless of how relevant it is. I will never click on it. That's why I use Adblock. It doesn't matter what you're showing me. I don't want it. Ever. This goes for offline, too. I don't watch TV except Netflix, partially because of ads. I don't listen to the radio, just my mp3 player. What are you…

You say you never clicked an ad. If you are visiting sites relevant to your industry you should actually check out the advertisers to keep an eye with what is happening in your industry(new tools, new conferences, new competition...).

Most of the big sites have CPM deals so they get paid for every visitor no matter of clicks or not.

And yes I hate intrusive ads as well and I don't watch TV channels with ads(I mostly watch football and HBO about 1-3 times a week).

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

#73

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…

I agree there are some parallels between ad-blocking and piracy (though they do tend to be in the realm of the "piracy = theft" idea rather than copyright-related parallels).

However, I think it's also important to recognize that by similarly-strong analogy, advertisements in general are inherently a sort of mental manipulation or brainwashing.

Now, I'm not saying that mental manipulation is inherently a bad or evil thing. When I'm writing this post, I hope that those reading it will become in some way more mentally accepting of my point of view. But I think we don't look enough at how susceptible we are to advertising, and how much advertising depends on exploiting cognitive biases or implying untruths that are not explicitly stated.

We (humans) are really bad at not being affected by advertising, even if we know we're being advertised to, and even if we know the ad is deceptive. When sites depend on ad revenue, they're saying "We're offering this content for free, but in exchange we want to be able to bias/prime your brain so that when you see Product X, even far in the future, you are more likely to desire it." That's a very powerful thing, and while it's certainly necessary for many business models today, I think we should think of this as a "necessary evil."

There are sites where I disable ad-blocking, often in response to a genuine plea on the part of the website. If it's a site I particularly care about and feel that I trust, then I allow ads as a way of helping them out. But if ad-blocking is piracy, then ads themselves are brainwashing -- exploiting failings in human cognition to unconsciously guide people into actions or purchases that may or may not be optimal for them -- and with the subject having limited defenses against it once infected.

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

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The TV ad example is a false analogy. If the page has ads that you don't want to see you can close it(no one forces you to watch it) or go for the toilet break. I agree that people hate ads and people also hate paying for things that can get for free(piracy). You guys are missing my point of ad blockers being borderline piracy and mainly try to justify your reason for using them.

It's not a false analogy at all. Muting the TV, changing the channel, or leaving the room when ads are on all deprive the advertiser their desired eyeballs to target. I believe that if TVs had been invented nowadays the mute functionality wouldn't be allowed during commercials because it would be seen as interfering with a profit model. In many ways, Web ads are worse than TV ads because they often aren't switching b…

TV and Web are different channels. I agree that the right analogy is blocking with a cardboard when ads are in show.

Is it piracy when crackers remove part of the software that secures it as that annoys people and they only want to use the functionality?

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

#75
post #56
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Switzerland is in Europe. Are you confusing EU with Europe?

I've got confused by the definition of European over Wikipedia, "A citizen or attribute of or from the European Union[2]", but you're indeed right. I should know, as I live right under Switzerland :)

I've fixed my comment now.

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

#76
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just buy a domain and a small hosting plan that includes mail. I am using that setup for close to 10 years now and it is fantastic. I use all-inkl (hit me for my affiliate link if you want to sign up so I become rich) which are a high quality yet very affordable german host.

all-inkl has huge incompetencies when it comes to mail. Their servers end up on spam lists every 1-3 weeks. Effect: Your customers do not receive any more emails from you. In addition if you inbox becomes larger than a specific size (1 GB is think) they will autoarchive your whole inbox to a folder... not nice if you have smart mail mailboxes

I have never had either happen. I use a local mail client though and have it set to delete mails at their end after 14 days.

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

#77

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…

I agree there are some parallels between ad-blocking and piracy (though they do tend to be in the realm of the "piracy = theft" idea rather than copyright-related parallels). However, I think it's also important to recognize that by similarly-strong analogy, advertisements in general are inherently a sort of mental manipulation or brainwashing. Now, I'm not saying that mental manipulation is inherently a bad or evil…

Completely agree with you on the points about the risk of brainwashing and impulse buying and people not realising how powerful and dangerous ads can be.

I would not go that far and claim all ads are brainwashing and manipulative. Going this route it means all communication is manipulative as there is an intention behind every word.

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

#78

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…

> In my opinion using ad blockers is borderline piracy.

Once upon a time I agreed with you... now I view all online ads as threats.

Unfortunately, marketing companies have gotten greedy and the degree to which they fingerprint and track us as we surf the web has gotten completely out of hand. This is an industry that cannot even follow their own watered-down initiatives like DoNotTrack.

And because ad networks use layers of affiliates, sites typically have no visibility nor control over what their visitors are being served. That's why you end up with a marketing company like Evidon buying Ghostery - just so they can help companies monitor the garbage on their own pages![3]

And to top it off, ads are now a common attack vector for viruses and malware that not even the big companies can control:

1. Just last week, Youtube was serving banking malware via its online ads. [1]

2. Last month Yahoo got a lot of attention serving Bitcoin malware via online ads on their site. [2]

I know that online publishing is important, and we need a strong press. But publishing desperately needs to find a new business model because online ads are a failed experiment and it's time to stick a fork in them.

[1]: http://labs.bromium.com/2014/02/21/the-wild-wild-web-youtube...

[2]: http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/05/tech/yahoo-malware-attack/inde...

[3]: https://www.ghostery.com/faq#q15

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

#79

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…

Personally, I find that people who directly depend on ad revenue contribute very little to my life. In the software industry, content creators who are paid to participate in the field tend to produce much better content than those who are paid to produce content.

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

#80

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?

MyKolab. As secure as a hosted service can get, located in Switzerland.
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