[jpdoctor]

Quick ref to get rid of Google Ads (and some others too) on Adblock Plus:

FOR CHROME:

Go to "Settings"

Find Extensions in the list on the left

Find AdBlock, select "Options"

Click the tab "Filter Lists"

Uncheck: "Allow some non-intrusive advertising"

FOR FIREFOX:

Go to the Firefox menu in the upper left corner

Select "Add-ons"

Select "Extensions"

Find Adblock Plus, select Options.

Find the "Filter Preferences" Button

Select the tab "Filter Subscriptions"

Uncheck: "Allow some non-intrusive advertising"

[CrazedGeek]

Alternatively, for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/adblock-edge/

[kefs]

For those curious, AdBlock Edge is a fork of ABP before they decided to add 'Acceptable Ads'.

[drummer32]

And what is the point if you can just disable acceptable ads in Adblock plus? Doesn't it use the same list?

[papaf]

No, its a different list - I just looked.

[kryten]

Thanks for posting this. Much better than adblock plus I.e. Much faster and more moral.

[zobzu]

And that's why I used adblock-edge as well :)

[takluyver]

On the other hand, I'm really pleased to find that they're whitelisting some ads by default, although I'm disappointed that money factors into it.

I use ad blockers, because so much of the web is a hideous mess without them. But I'm somewhat conflicted about it, because I know that a lot of sites depend on ad revenue. I see this as a kind of collective agreement with advertisers: I don't mind adverts, but I don't want them flashing all over my screen when I'm trying to get stuff done.

[wallunit]

I don't think that you have any reason to feel disappointed, unless you have donated a significant amount of money to Adblock Plus. And even then, just disable that feature.

After all that's the way Adblock Plus makes most of its money, needed to develop the browser extension, port it to new platforms, maintaining and hosting the filter lists (which by the way are also used by every other ad blocker). I doubt that if Adblock Plus wouldn't have done this step, it would have ever been ported to other browsers and platforms, and that the filter lists (as mentioned, also used by other ad blockers, like AdBlock), would have been that well curated as of today.

So I don't see anything wrong with that. Or does anybody complain, that most free Android apps show adds, and you have to buy the paid version, to get rid of them? No, everybody understands that this is the way they make money. The only difference in case of Adblock Plus is, that you don't actually have to give them money, but just have to disable a checkbox in the options.

[tr4656]

By disabling that feature, he would block all ads. However, he did say that he wants to support sites who rely on ad revenue. I don't think supporting Adblock Plus was what he was really concerned about.

[wallunit]

I might got his message slightly wrong. However white listing is is a feature in the filter list format itself, that is used ever since by every ad blocker. So you can include third-party white lists or maintain your own with every ad blocker, already before Adblock Plus introduced "Acceptable Ads" and its own white list.

[takluyver]

The important point for me is that one of the major adblockers has enabled a whitelist by default, and is curating it to allow non-intrusive adverts. That can affect enough users to make a difference, which my setting up a whitelist myself wouldn't.

[oneeyedpigeon]

Can advertisers tell whether their ad has been blocked via Adblock, et al? Because, if not, you really shouldn't worry about using a blocker.

[lotu]

Yes they can.

[perlpimp]

Very true. Imagine every commercial entity that delivered something to your place - would plaster some sort of advertisement poster.

Completely unacceptable. I think the answer is a permission based advertising. have a button on every website that turns on Ads. this way engagement would be higher at least IMO.

[gtirloni]

I add the websites I care to the whitelist so they can benefit from the ad revenue.

[gcb0]

Still shocks me that people on this site uses those lame extrensions (which are a security risk no less)

someonewhocares.org/hosts_zero/

Save this hosts file in your house's router and be safely free of advertising, shock sites, tracking.... On ALL devices

With no added attack vector as with an extension and not limited to one browser in one device

[driverdan]

How exactly are ad blocking extensions a security risk?

Blocking at the domain level gives you no control. What if you need to see what a site looks like without ads blocked? I have a few of my own content sites that use ads. By blocking outside of the browser I wouldn't be able to see what they look like to other users.

[3pt14159]

Because they could be updated and now your whole browser is pwnd.

This is how sites like Compete.com get their metrics.

[pyre]

  > Because they could be updated

So, this is a rally against all extensions? Expanding this argument, we basically get to a point where we don't trust any software:

  1. No more browser extensions.
  2. Want ad-blocking in Firefox? Request feature.
  3. Feature request denied.
  4. Fork Firefox.
  5. Add ad-blocking to Firefox fork.

This leaves us with a couple of issues:

1. The bar to adding functionality to a browser has now been raised significantly. With a larger barrier to entry, we will see fewer extensions for trivial things like 'adding collapsible threads to HN', which can make your life easier, but isn't worth a fork of the entire browser to achieve.

2. Trust. You still have to trust the developer of the browser fork that same way that you have to trust the developer of the browser extension.

[coldtea]

>So, this is a rally against all extensions? Expanding this argument, we basically get to a point where we don't trust any software:

Yes. So DON'T expand it. The thing is, third party updatable extensions are far less trustworthy than Firefox.

[pyre]

This is true, but to only trust Firefox means that you only get features that Mozilla adds to Firefox.

[njharman]

> this is a rally against all extensions?

No it is a rally against extensions which have a non-risky (and arguably) superior alternative.

Risk is a gradient and cumulative. The more risky things you do, the more at risk you are.

[gcb0]

Yes. As it always been for any software.

Host files: as secure as you can get. Whole network.

Browser extension: remote code exploit possibility. Probably not available for mobile. Trusting someone who takes money from Google...

[smsm42]

There's nothing different from any other extension, so what you're saying nobody should be using extensions in their browsers. Good luck with convincing people not to do it.

[coldtea]

Well, I for one don't use any extensions with Chrome. And not even from security concerns. Just from lack of any interest to do so. Why should I? For some marginal utility?

I'd take it more average people don't use extensions either -- if they know what they are in the first place.

[smsm42]

Well, Stallman browses the web by sending emails[1], so he still has you beat :)

But you must realize 99.999% of the population would never do that, and for most people extensions are vital and useful. So giving them such security advice is like saying "oh, personal security is simple - just never have any money and anything valuable and never leave home". Not very practical.

[1] http://www.stallman.org/stallman-computing.html

[HelloMcFly]

While I'd agree that many plugins have marginal utility, some like Firebug or Lastpass I find to be invaluable.

[paranoiacblack]

> For some marginal utility?

Yes, this is the point of extensions. Extensions are help you and others do things with the browser that the vendor shouldn't really spend time on. Approaching them with the idea that they're useless doesn't really help your argument.

For example, I once wrote a browser extension that extracts class calendar info from the school website and automatically syncs it to the calendar application of your choosing. It turned my class scheduling process from an error-prone 2 hour process to a 3-click 10 minute step. You can label that as a useless, marginal utility, but that's being facetious at best.

[drdaeman]

Disable automatic updates and review the code before installing any updates manually.

[danielweber]

I agree with "disable automatic updates," unfortunately.

But "review the code"? You have no chance.

[drdaeman]

Although I don't do this on regular basis, but I happen to read many browser extension sources. They're mostly relatively easy to understand and contain no unconventional clever hacks or obfuscated parts. The only obfuscated code in most extensions are minified third-party libraries (like jQuery).

Won't say ABE's code is compact or easy to read, but it's fairly comprehensible and reviewing it in reasonable time feels possible. It is well possible that some tricky security issue will slip under the radar, but code contains no tricky math or crypto stuff where every single point is crucial for security, and spotting malware/spyware code should be possible.

Maybe I'm wrong about this.

[gingerlime]

This doesn't however block things like google ads inside Gmail, which ad blocker browser extensions typically can and do block.

[furyofantares]

Would you also be shocked if there are people who make no attempt to block ads at all? I would not be shocked by that, but I'd guess not blocking ads at all is a greater security risk than running ABP.

[hkmurakami]

also people who don't try to mitigate the effects of Facebook iframes

[PanickedOmlette]

Could you please tell a bit about that? What's wrong with them?

[mcovey]

I use this but it does have the disadvantage of being difficult to disable when you are getting issues because of blocked ads.

I also use Fanboy's adblock list ( https://www.fanboy.co.nz/ ) in Opera which requires no browser add-on, it's a feature of the web browser (RIP).

[medde]

I use a browser that blocks nothing and one that blocks almost everything. (when something breaks, sometimes it's easier to load it in a stock browser)

[ferdo]

Many thanks for the hosts file. I always prefer a DIY solution as opposed to trusting others.

I'll pass this on.

[ubojan]

it's useful to have extension if you want to disable it and temporarily see ads; also it's easy to whitelist ads on particular sites/pages - there are non intrusive and useful ads.

[adPothier]

Combined with AdBlock, I use Ghostery[1], which is a nice add-on (Chrome/FF/Safari/Opera/IE) : it blocks any javascript from ads networks, but also from analytics, trackers, socials plugins (and more) , and also cookies from the same trackers. Everything is configurable per-tracker and per-website.

It's quite a must-have if you don't want to be the product on the Internet. And a good failover over Ad-block.

[1]. http://www.ghostery.com/

[guelo]

The Ghostery extension tracks you and sells the data to ad companies, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5897682

[StacyC]

Agreed on Ghostery. I have been using it for quite a while and it seems to work well.

[cake]

And don't forget to support the websites that you visit the most by whitelisting them.

[programminggeek]

Um, that's dumb unless you plan on clicking their ads. Seriously, just showing a CPC ad doesn't help them. Showing a CPM ad doesn't help much either if they are getting $5-10 CPM. You literally could just pay them $5 or $10 and be more valuable than whitelisting them.

[eli]

Yes, and some sites do charge $5 or $10 for access or for additional features. But I'm glad the whole web doesn't work that way.

[tomflack]

If a site can show they have a lower percentage of adblock users than standard, it's a boon for them.

If I am not blocking their ads, there is a chance I'll see something that interests me and click on it.

You don't need to explicitly state "I will click ads every day" to make it not "dumb".

[1qaz2wsx3edc]

Just to clarify, on chrome if you're using AdBlock (vs Adblock Plus), there is no such options. :)

[mparramon]

Another alternative is blacklisting sites via your hosts file, which means it applies to all applications and not only the browser. Also, it works in any UNIX-based OS: http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/