[bad_user]

> "You would expect that an extension that injects or replaces advertisements is malicious, but then you have AdBlock that creates an ad-free browsing experience and is technically very similar."

AdBlock is very clear in what it does and users install it because they want to block ads, whereas users are usually not aware when an extension injects ads. As a note, the Awesome Screenshot extension for Firefox asks you if you want ads injected, probably because of Mozilla's review process, whereas the Chrome version does not.

It's one thing for websites to be ripped of the opportunity to make money from your eyeballs, with your consent, it's quite another for those same websites to generate money unknowingly for an obscure third-party. We are probably talking about copyright infringement done for commercial for-profit reasons.

Google is annoying me lately. I now use Firefox on my Android and I do that because AdBlock Plus and uBlock are working on it, whereas Chrome for Android still doesn't have plugins, probably because they don't want ad blockers in it.

[seanp2k2]

Yeah, but ABP also has white listed ads: http://techcrunch.com/2013/07/06/google-and-others-reportedl...

Ghostery has a bit of a different model, but they're no saints: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/516156/a-popular-ad-blo...

I guess the lure of selling use data is just too great for any commercial entity to control the source of these as blockers. uBlock and PrivacyBadger are still clean AFAIK.

[username223]

From what I've read, ABP are just plain extortionists: "those are nice 'acceptable' ads you have; shame if something were to happen to them." Ghostery's business model makes it a bit untrustworthy, but it works pretty well as far as I can tell. uBlock is "you get what you pay for" freeware, so you can trust it as long as not many people use it. PrivacyBadger is developed by a small number of honest-to-God privacy zealots (in the best possible sense), so it won't get sold out, but will probably lag behind the curve.

I use a couple of them at once, block most JavaScript, usually run with cookies disabled, and pay a bit of attention to what's going on in the privacy news. For less tech-savvy relatives, I just install Ghostery and disable third-party cookies, since that seems least likely to break websites, and blocks most of the worst tracking.

Oh, and hosts-block tynt. Those guys should drown in burning kerosene.

[bad_user]

The whitelisted ads are configurable and to tell you the truth this is what I miss now that I'm using uBlock. Personally I understand that ads are a business model that many websites and services need to survive and I've got nothing against websites showing ads tastefully.