Yeah, just one further conflict of interest, money extortion "service", to offer companies for those good ol' privacy thiefs and then claim its for the benefits of us and companies... Nothing to see here, go on....
You can bet your paycheck that Google’s own ads will never be blocked.
Yes, you can. From the article: "Chrome will halt ads that aren't compliant with standards from a Google-backed industry group called the Coalition for Better Ads"
Great. Will they honor "do not track"? No? Well I'll keep blocking I guess.
Nobody honors DNT, blame Microsoft for botching that up.
None of the browser makers have gotten it through their thick heads that they do not own the web. It's the same problem with forcing HTTPS down everyones throats. The minor benefit it provides against snooping has a major downside in that both the browser and the server have to expend about 10 times the amount of resources to process the page.
For what? So co-workers don't know what porn you're looking at? The DNS will still say you're looking at pornhub, just won't be able to tell which address within it.
And that's the problem with all of this. The worst ads are on the worst sites, and because DSP and SSP's rarely give a crap about the quality of ads, whoever has the lowest bar is the one who will take the worst ads.
All google had to do was give users the option to turn off javascript running inside iframes, or prevent iframes from "iframe busting" (eg show nothing instead) That would have solved ALL bad ads in one shot. They won't do it because the ad providers don't get their tracking data if javascript is turned off.
It's a slow moving target. Right now what would fix everything is having a temporal blacklist/whitelist based on DNS blacklists. One Whitelist for services that issue plain-image ads, plain-text ads only, and another blacklist for script-based advertisements where DNS names with zero trust or low trust must be manually approved for 7 days before being permitted to show any ads. Certain activity should always be blacklisted:
auto-refresh of more than one ad unit (auto-refresh or auto-load of ads only if viewability is 100%) bad "responsive" ads that push content around instead of claiming a fixed space and staying there ads that change the volume setting of the browser ads that try to access the camera/microphone ads that try to open another pop-up/pop-under window ads that that try do do interstitials (I'm looking at you newspaper sites) ads that force you to login (you thought your privacy was safe) and still show ads
The vast majority of bad ads are found on sites that cater to porn, piracy, or malware. Legitimate ads come from adsense, appnexus, openx, sovrn, pubmatic and ad quality is a function of the site quality. Low quality content? low quality ads.
ads that change the volume setting of the browser ads that try to access the camera/microphone
Wait, they can fucking do that?!
ads that try to open another pop-up/pop-under window
You'd think this (and the previous two) would be something that a browser could easily block 100% of the time. "If the USER did not issue X command, do not do X command." it seems like it shouldn't be difficult at all.
It's one thing to block ads; it's another to have a company's cookies so embedded in your operating system that it's constantly reappearing even after being repeatedly removed. On my Mac, under Safari> Preferences>Privacy>Manage Website Data, there's one company (Belkin) that keeps reappearing no matter how many times I remove it. Very frustrating that Apple can't get rid of it. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Go to your HomeLIbrary > Safari and delete the Database Folder that will take care of the persistent items. You can also get rid of all the cookies by deleting the Local Storage folder. Safari will remake both those folders when it reopens.
You can get to your home library from the Finder 'Go' menu, if you hold down the 'option' key you home library will be in the list. Once it's open you can then drag the Library folder icon in the menu bar to your sidebar so you have a permanent shortcut to your Library, or even better open the Safari Folder that's inside your Home Library and drag that folder icon in the title bar to your sidebar that way you can directly access your ~/Library/Safari folder directly.
Go to your HomeLIbrary > Safari and delete the Database Folder that will take care of the persistent items. You can also get rid of all the cookies by deleting the Local Storage folder. Safari will remake both those folders when it reopens.
Why's it so hard for Apple to implement a cookie whitelist? Or the ability to "protect" cookies? I have a set of cookies I never want to delete, but then I have tens of thousands of others that, despite me blocking cookies, I still get. I'd like to wipe those from time to time, but I have to do it MANUALLY to be able to save the cookies I don't want to delete. If we could click a lock by the cookies we want to save, then we could one-click delete ALL of the rest while saving those. Or just whitelist cookies from sites you want while–get this–REFUSING TO WRITE ANYTHING ELSE TO THE DISK.
How is that difficult? It's a massive security breach that cookies can bypass the user's preferences.
Go to your HomeLIbrary > Safari and delete the Database Folder that will take care of the persistent items. You can also get rid of all the cookies by deleting the Local Storage folder. Safari will remake both those folders when it reopens.
Why's it so hard for Apple to implement a cookie whitelist? Or the ability to "protect" cookies? I have a set of cookies I never want to delete, but then I have tens of thousands of others that, despite me blocking cookies, I still get. I'd like to wipe those from time to time, but I have to do it MANUALLY to be able to save the cookies I don't want to delete. If we could click a lock by the cookies we want to save, then we could one-click delete ALL of the rest while saving those. Or just whitelist cookies from sites you want while–get this–REFUSING TO WRITE ANYTHING ELSE TO THE DISK.
How is that difficult? It's a massive security breach that cookies can bypass the user's preferences.
Tell me about it. After being pi55ed off at the sudden appearance of persistent items I eventually worked my way through the Library folder to locate where it was happening. It's bad enough that there's no basic cookie management, but why Apple allows items to stay even when you have elected to remove all cache and cookies and data, is beyond my ken.
I suppose it's a good start for Google. Ads nowadays have become so obnoxious and intrusive, not to mention severely hampering my browsing experience by sucking up bandwidth that it has just become a never-ending fight between users and advertisers.
I've been using Ghostery for block all that crap. Unfortunately, many websites become broken unless I turn off my ad blocker. It sucks. I realize websites need to generate revenue but there's got to be a better way.
I've been using 1Blocker for both iOS and OS X Safari. It's pretty awesome -- ads, trackers, and more. You can whitelist, write your own rules, and even block particular elements from a webpage.
Does it stop all those annoying video ads from running on Safari? I hate those things.
Comments
None of the browser makers have gotten it through their thick heads that they do not own the web. It's the same problem with forcing HTTPS down everyones throats. The minor benefit it provides against snooping has a major downside in that both the browser and the server have to expend about 10 times the amount of resources to process the page.
For what? So co-workers don't know what porn you're looking at? The DNS will still say you're looking at pornhub, just won't be able to tell which address within it.
And that's the problem with all of this. The worst ads are on the worst sites, and because DSP and SSP's rarely give a crap about the quality of ads, whoever has the lowest bar is the one who will take the worst ads.
All google had to do was give users the option to turn off javascript running inside iframes, or prevent iframes from "iframe busting" (eg show nothing instead) That would have solved ALL bad ads in one shot. They won't do it because the ad providers don't get their tracking data if javascript is turned off.
It's a slow moving target. Right now what would fix everything is having a temporal blacklist/whitelist based on DNS blacklists. One Whitelist for services that issue plain-image ads, plain-text ads only, and another blacklist for script-based advertisements where DNS names with zero trust or low trust must be manually approved for 7 days before being permitted to show any ads. Certain activity should always be blacklisted:
auto-refresh of more than one ad unit (auto-refresh or auto-load of ads only if viewability is 100%)
bad "responsive" ads that push content around instead of claiming a fixed space and staying there
ads that change the volume setting of the browser
ads that try to access the camera/microphone
ads that try to open another pop-up/pop-under window
ads that that try do do interstitials (I'm looking at you newspaper sites)
ads that force you to login (you thought your privacy was safe) and still show ads
The vast majority of bad ads are found on sites that cater to porn, piracy, or malware. Legitimate ads come from adsense, appnexus, openx, sovrn, pubmatic and ad quality is a function of the site quality. Low quality content? low quality ads.
You'd think this (and the previous two) would be something that a browser could easily block 100% of the time. "If the USER did not issue X command, do not do X command." it seems like it shouldn't be difficult at all.
You can get to your home library from the Finder 'Go' menu, if you hold down the 'option' key you home library will be in the list. Once it's open you can then drag the Library folder icon in the menu bar to your sidebar so you have a permanent shortcut to your Library, or even better open the Safari Folder that's inside your Home Library and drag that folder icon in the title bar to your sidebar that way you can directly access your ~/Library/Safari folder directly.
This kind of bebahior needs to stop. Or I will cancel my subscription and stop using the site.
How is that difficult? It's a massive security breach that cookies can bypass the user's preferences.
Does it stop all those annoying video ads from running on Safari? I hate those things.