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by seanp2k2 4092 days ago
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.

2 comments

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.

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.