[t0pz]

"Acceptable Ads program" is a label that covers up the extortion of Advertisers & Networks. Also, if the USER were actually controlling/deciding what is shown and what isn't then i would have 0 problems with it. However, so far their practice of who/what they allow and what not is arbitrary at best. Im not talking about the automatic acceptable ads program. I'm talking about their closed-door deals that have been going on since 2015. Large sums of money crossed over to Eyeo's accounts from the big Google, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. to simply allow all their ads. Eyeo posted that they verify that these "agreements" are kept manually https://adblockplus.org/acceptable-ads-agreements HA HA HA. Any reasonable person who has ever worked with ad networks knows that manually monitoring ads is impossible. When looking at their Team, they certainly don't possess the resources to do this manually. Basically, they accepted cash for ads. Aside from all that, Adblock the plugin logs everything you do. From what websites you browse, to how long you spent on them, all the way to keystrokes. I heard they are even considering building a sort of Ad network since they have data on their users that NOBODY else can offer. I get the whole blind fanboy-trust for things that you find useful, but i look at people not at products. And Eyeo has been fishy from the start. I have no doubt they will do whatever is necessary to increase monetization on their tool. The guys come from the Advertising Industry after all.

[awalton]

I'm not sure what kind of hard stuff you're on, but a claim that AdBlock Plus has a keylogger is a pretty damned bold one, and you're going to need to back that up with some heavy duty proof.

Here's the codebase[1], feel free to point out where in there it is so you can be headline news on HN/Reddit/{Insert News Outlet} tomorrow. Maybe you will be the one to finally kill AdBlock Plus, wouldn't you like that?

1: https://github.com/adblockplus/adblockpluscore and https://github.com/adblockplus/adblockplus

[adsense_is_crap]

That AdBlock Plus has a key-logger is still possible in the context of certain browsers, which have RPC APIs, flag setting and live updating capabilities.

This would allow this to be done remotely, and without a user being aware as happened, when a very popular browser downloaded a binary blob, which was noticed by Debian maintainers. Read Chromium's privacy policy. There is nothing that would legally preclude them from doing this.

Also, an older supporting example of company greed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavasoft#Controversies

[t0pz]

github does not reveal the part of their code that is hosted on Eyeo's servers. While i certainly can't prove that they do, you also can't use their repo to determine what else they do in the background, leaving it up to "trust" again, as usual. Also, i couldn't care less about some headline. I would like a discussion, not e-pride

[awalton]

It's really, really simple here dude:

Either they're keylogging, which has to be done client side, or they're not. Which is it?

I linked you to the client source code. Tell me where in that source code you see a keylogger, and I will personally guarantee your name will be on the front page of this website tomorrow as uncovering what is almost certainly one of the largest keylogging networks in history.

Your "server side" handwaving is bullshit and constitutes evidence that you know nothing at all about how the technology actually works.

If AdBlock were making connections to some server to send back keylogging info, that would be headline news, but requires evidence to be taken seriously.

Right now, you cannot be taken seriously. You can only be taken as a spewer of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt.

[susam]

Some secret code hosted on Eyeo's server cannot magically collect keystrokes made on a user's web browser. There has to be a client side JavaScript code or a plugin on the web browser that collects this data and sends it to the server, and therefore, one would be able to point to the plugin or the piece of code that runs on the web browser that does sends the keystrokes related data back to the server.

At the very least, one would be able to see the data (or suspicious data, if it is obfuscated) being sent from the web browser to the server in the 'Network' tab of the web browser's inspector/developer-tools. Do you see any such suspicious data being sent from the web browser to the server? Can you post a screenshot if you do?

[adsense_is_crap]

By that reasoning, I shouldn't use the internet because it does not describe a web of trust system that would meet secure-by design properties that you demand (Phil Zimmerman, the creator of PGP describes this in theory though)

More fundamentally, your claim is not falsifiable https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

i.e. you can't claim something true on the basis of the other person not being able to reasonably have a way of disproving it!

edit: upvoted you because you probably are on smoking something and these people are picking on you for it

[narrowrail]

The request is for you or t0pz to point to the ABP code that allows for keylogging.

N.B. At the time of this comment, the time-stamp of the above comment is 9hrs ago and the account is 13hrs old.

[niij]

I was filling your parent argument, but calling ABP a key logger just crossed into delusional territory.

[tjl]

I agree that the user controlling which were "acceptable" is a good idea, but that's basically whitelisting. My first thought was to have a crowd-sourced list of acceptable ads, but that's pretty easily gamed. Then, it becomes a race between the adblock developer and the people trying to disrupt the system and that's a lot of work just to decide what's acceptable.

[lostlogin]

With a decent ad blocker or two, the experience is user controlled. No adverts. The fact the people will pay money to block bs and spend time and money to achieve this should provide a clue to advertisers. I go out of my way to avoid products that advertise to me. Hopefully no break though, but as a general rule, if I want a product, I'll seek something out.

[madeofpalk]

Are you saying that you avoid companies that use advertisements to promote their products, or products that have advertisements to fund itself?