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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

#81

Post by marcosdumay »

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…

I'm more than happy to see your ads. I'll even click on it, and buy things from the target if I like what I see. I've done that several times in the past. In fact, when they are relevant, and in moderated amounts, I do like ads.

Now, I'm sure that you took care to guarantee that your ads won't track me, or try to invade my computer, right? Because if you didn't, it's blocked and you can whine and call me bad names the entire day, it won't change a thing.

By the way, I never saw adblockers blocking properly applied, safe to load ads. Maybe they do, I don't use them for quite a long time (I use other tech).

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

#82

Post by marcosdumay »

patal wrote: post #37

Can we update the AdBlock list to suppress said yellow bar from display?

It would be better to update browsers, to display a different warning, in a place where a page can't change at all. (And while we are there, Firefox, please, do the same with the master password dialog.)

But I doubt any of them will do that because, security be damed, it messes with the minimalist fashion.

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

#83

Post by DanAndersen »

adrianmn wrote: post #77
DanAndersen wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree with you there about the difficulty of finding the line between manipulative ads and non-manipulative (or less manipulative) communication in general. It's not like we're all pure spherically-modeled creatures of pure thought and reason who can derive the optimal things to do and buy from first principles.

I think one issue with many ads is the matter of power disparity. Those who are more trained in marketing and advertising skills know how to present material in a way that is pleasing to an audience. The average person doesn't have this knowledge or a good sense of all the techniques that are being used on them -- or even if they do they are still susceptible. This means that it's far easier for "attackers" to "attack" than for "defenders" to "defend" (using the words here with an acknowledgment that not all "attacks" are a bad thing; a lot is simply communication). With further advances in data mining and with large amounts of funds being put into advertising, those who are advertising are becoming more adept at knowing what mental buttons to press to get the desired response, while the general populace is not getting better at withstanding it.

It's also a question of scale, and being paid to advertise. For example, I enjoy traditional wet shaving, and there are a few blogs I follow that have reviews of shaving creams, DE razors, etc. I have learned to trust these reviews and while they act as ads for these products (they do manipulate me into being more likely to buy those products) I trust that these reviews are more "genuine" and reliable. When there are more sponsored reviews or payments from third-party ad companies, then the appearance of endorsement (and trusted recommendation) is there but without the same fine control by the content provider. Maybe it's a utopian naive vision, but "I recommend this product because I've used it and like it" seems different in substance from "I recommend this product because the makers of the product have paid me to say that I recommend it."

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

#84

Post by DanAndersen »

adrianmn wrote: post #74
DanAndersen wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

To split hairs, I'd say that's not piracy. To me, piracy would be sharing that software (or receiving that software) to others who haven't paid for it. The security circumvention may be a necessary part of the piracy process, but I don't see that as the issue. Consider the scores of games in the past that have had draconian DRM schemes, which unnecessarily require always-on Internet connections or regular dialing home to some server -- maybe a server that no longer exists as the developers do not support the game. In these cases, modifying these impediments to the functionality without sharing the software wouldn't be piracy in my eyes.

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

#85

Post by jruderman »

chalst wrote: post #41
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,…

Ad-blockers protect against attacks coming from compromised ad servers, but also increase your total attack surface. The message is misleading about the relative risks, and it's dishonest in singling out ad-blockers among thousands of extensions, but I wouldn't say it's blatantly false.

Is it libelous against browser makers, though? They spoof the browser's info bar and I believe they style the landing page to look like an internal browser page.

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

#86

Post by adrianmn »

DanAndersen wrote: post #84
adrianmn wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

To split hairs, I'd say that's not piracy. To me, piracy would be sharing that software (or receiving that software) to others who haven't paid for it. The security circumvention may be a necessary part of the piracy process, but I don't see that as the issue. Consider the scores of games in the past that have had draconian DRM schemes, which unnecessarily require always-on Internet connections or regular dialing hom…

Actually the correct analogy to ad blockers would be downloading a free trial/demo and cracking it for own use without paying for it - would you consider that piracy?

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

#87

Post by mason240 »

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…

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

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

#88

Post by donrhummy »

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

+1. Stay far away from 1and1.com! I had the worst experiences with them of any tech company. Customer service doesn't get worse than them.

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

#89

Post by mineo »

kuschku wrote: post #65
leonhandreke wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think Hetzner has also some datacenters in Hamburg.

According to https://www.hetzner.de/hosting/unternehmen/rechenzentrum they only have data centers in Nuremberg (Bavaria) and Falkenstein (Saxony).

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

#90

Post by PavlovsCat »

microtonal wrote: post #44
PavlovsCat wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There is still a difference between storing the emails unencrypted and using them to profile users for ad targeting.

But anyway, what you are talking about could still be optional: if you wanted to search and be somewhat private you'd have to download the emails with a local client via IMAP - and if you really need search via web interface, you would toggle the option to store the emails unencrypted for that purpose.

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