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Yes ABP is great for blocking ads, but Ghostery will block the tracking cookies ABP doesn't care about.. A plus for Ghostery is it remove all of the +1, Facebook, and Twitter links from around the web that I could care less about.

ABP can do that aswell if you subscribe to the Anti-Social filter. Scroll to the very bottom of this page: http://adblockplus.org/en/subscriptions. It's under Miscellaneous.

Black hole the domains on the EasyList filter from AdBlockPlus at the router. A script / regex will strip out everything which doesn't fit a domain.TLD format.

If requests to the advertising site don't resolve, how can they track you?

How quickly we all forget what it was like to be constantly bombarded with ads for products you cannnot use or cannot be purchased in your locale.

I forget what it was like to be constantly bombarded with ads, thank goodness. Since I ignore any ads I do see -- I never click -- they might as well be for products I cannot use.

True about Ghostery, etc. - but we are the geeks, we are winning this fight. In the end, as long as I control the browser, I can find a way to kill your advertisement.

On the downside, this is why product placement, etc. are becoming so pervasive.

I read up on ABL, didn't know about it, thanks. Then I read http://adblockplus.org/de/acceptable-ads - and while I'm not a fan, I understand where they're coming from. I've unchecked that setting for me, and if they leave it alone on updates, I'm ok. It just might have at least the effect of teaching the ad guys to not be obnoxious.

By default it does have something like "allow non-intrusive ads".
If you want to block those as well, click the Adblock Plus icon and choose "Filter Preferences" from the menu. Uncheck "Allow non-intrusive advertising" and you are done.
https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads

Get you a computer, just about anything modern will do, and a couple of supported nic's. I used the TEG-PCITXRL because I have use older model low profile optiplexes.
http://www.pfsense.org/

Firewall port 80 and port 443
set up squid
set up squidblock

Create a wpad.dat file and put it on the web server, so browsers will automatically configure to use the proxy as long as they are set to automatically configure

Then download some freely available pre-categorized sites. I used these, but you can also use shalla's if you are a non-profit.
1. http://dsi.ut-capitole.fr/documentations/cache/squidguard_en.html#contrib
2. http://squidguard.mesd.k12.or.us/blacklists.tgz
3. http://www.shallalist.de/

I also downloaded the list of websites that adblock uses from easylist, and put it in the right format with a quick macro in my text editor:
https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easylist.txt

You can get really fancy if you want, and if you have a domain you can do a man in the middle proxy by creating a certificate then installing it on your pfsense box and each desktop. This would allow you to just route all 80 and 443 traffic through squid, and then you could use dansguardian to do keyword filtering. For your application I would probably steer clear of this for now, because you need to have a good way of making sure that EVERYONE knows that you can see their passwords to banks, emails, etc, and it's in a policy they sign or you could get in deep doo doo.

A content-filled and freely-accessible Internet is a resource that the whole community benefits from, and yet Adblock drives up the real cost of having that content and accessibility.

Just FYI, Adblock is working with advertising companies to permit non-intrusive advertising. They don't allow very many at this point, but the feature is implemented in the current version of the software and enabled by default; they are working to build a process for handling the exceptions list.

I say all this because the popularity of Adblock was driven not by a blanket hatred of online advertising, but by the aggressiveness with which some players tried to overtap the market for eyeballs. E.g. your fellow advertisers played a role in precipitating this because they used pop-ups, overlays, flashy animations, and other gratuitous elements to outshout you.

I'm not saying the world is a fair place or that Adblockers such as myself are perfectly in the right. What I am saying is that the web-centric approach is a great equalizer: customers have more choices in how they consume content, and content producers can't impose the same 33% ad content that cable TV does*. (It's also a great equalizer for little guy content-producers, who no longer have to own a media empire to put compelling content out there.)

(*I made up the 33% number... that's just my estimate based on watching the clock a few times, and it doesn't include ticker ads, corner overlays, or product placements. Would love to see the actual data for cable TV in various markets.)

A content-filled and freely-accessible Internet is a resource that the whole community benefits from, and yet Adblock drives up the real cost of having that content and accessibility.

Just FYI, Adblock is working with advertising companies to permit non-intrusive advertising. They don't allow very many at this point, but the feature is implemented in the current version of the software and enabled by default; they are working to build a process for handling the exceptions list.

I say all this because the popularity of Adblock was driven not by a blanket hatred of online advertising, but by the aggressiveness with which some players tried to overtap the market for eyeballs. E.g. your fellow advertisers played a role in precipitating this because they used pop-ups, overlays, flashy animations, and other gratuitous elements to outshout you.

I'm not saying the world is a fair place or that Adblockers such as myself are perfectly in the right. What I am saying is that the web-centric approach is a great equalizer: customers have more choices in how they consume content, and content producers can't impose the same 33% ad content that cable TV does*. (It's also a great equalizer for little guy content-producers, who no longer have to own a media empire to put compelling content out there.)

(*I made up the 33% number... that's just my estimate based on watching the clock a few times, and it doesn't include ticker ads, corner overlays, or product placements. Would love to see the actual data for cable TV in various markets.)

Most of the memory issues are related to add-ons, sometimes due to combinations of add-ons. For example, Adblock Plus and Flashblock have a nasty issue (see https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10222 ), making Firefox consume loads of memory and eventually crashing. Fortunately it can be easily solved by disabling the little tab from Adblock Plus.

• Adblock plus
• Sharemenot, stops like-buttons from facebook and so on
• Cookie white list, allows you to block cookies by default and only allow where you really want to. Turns out that it's not many sites.. I have approx. 50 sites in the white list, and you can white-list allowing only for session cookies or forever.

The tools are there for those who want. And it doesn't take much work to use them.

http://adblockplus.org/en/

I don't see a single ad on space.com. But yes, the never citing sources thing is annoying.

The reason it's on by default is that the ads are specially screened for their acceptability

Blatantly FALSE. This is the list: https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/exceptionrules.txt
Anything matching these simple filters is displayed. (I had to insert a couple of spaces on the last line to get the comment through the spam filter.)

[Adblock Plus 2.0]
! Checksum: apz2+jXNPQ5CLFYHWghn6A
! Expires: 10 days
! Text-based search ads on suche.netzwelt.de
@@||google.com/uds/*$script,subdocument,document,domain=suche.netzwelt.de
@@||suche.netzwelt.de^$elemhide
@@||google.com/aclk^$domain=suche.netzwelt.de,subdocument
@@||googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk^$domain=suche.netzwelt.de,subdocument
||images.netzwelt.de/partner/*
! Static image ads on t3n.de
@@||guruads.de/api/view/*$script,domain=t3n.de
@@||guruads.de/u/b/*$image,domain=t3n.de
! Text ads on Sedo parking domains
@@$sitekey=MFwwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADS wAwSAJBANnylWw2vLY4hUn9w06zQKbhKBfvjFU CsdFlb6TdQhxb9RXWXuI4t31c+o8fYOv/s8q1LGPga3DE1L/tHU4LENMCAwEAAQ,image,~image

Here's how Eric Bishop (the guy behind Trueblock Plus) responds:

Q: It's possible to turn the ads off in AdBlock plus, isn't that good enough?

A: No, it's not. Defaults are very powerful things, most people never touch them. People react very differently depending whether a choice is presented as “opt-in” vs “opt-out.” The creator of Adblock Plus knows this, saying that enabling ads by default is “the only way to reach the goals.”

Q: Adblock Plus claims their “goal” is to prevent the loss of advertising revenue to meaningful and important sites that rely on it for survival. Isn't that a good thing?

A: Maybe, but that explanation neatly side-steps the real problem. The problem is that I want to be able to decide for myself which sites are meaningful and important. When Adblock’s “acceptable” ads are enabled, the user is not the one deciding which sites get a pass and which do not, the owners of Adblock Plus are. That is a huge problem. The person that controls this “acceptable” list can sell a spot on the list to the highest bidder, making a profit by violating your trust. While impossible to prove, it seems likely the real motivation behind this feature is greed and has nothing whatsoever to do with any sort of altruistic desire to preserve websites that depend on advertising revenue.

This is the list of current “acceptable” ads, as defined by Adblock Plus. This list includes text advertisements on Sedo parking domains, a giant company that sells domain names, and publishes advertisements on unused domains. This is hardly a poor little website where meaningful content is in danger of disappearing because no one will view their advertisements.

The reason it's on by default is that the ads are specially screened for their acceptability

Blatantly FALSE. This is the list: https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/exceptionrules.txt
Anything matching these simple filters is displayed. (I had to insert a couple of spaces on the last line to get the comment through the spam filter.)

[Adblock Plus 2.0]
! Checksum: apz2+jXNPQ5CLFYHWghn6A
! Expires: 10 days
! Text-based search ads on suche.netzwelt.de
@@||google.com/uds/*$script,subdocument,document,domain=suche.netzwelt.de
@@||suche.netzwelt.de^$elemhide
@@||google.com/aclk^$domain=suche.netzwelt.de,subdocument
@@||googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk^$domain=suche.netzwelt.de,subdocument
||images.netzwelt.de/partner/*
! Static image ads on t3n.de
@@||guruads.de/api/view/*$script,domain=t3n.de
@@||guruads.de/u/b/*$image,domain=t3n.de
! Text ads on Sedo parking domains
@@$sitekey=MFwwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQADS wAwSAJBANnylWw2vLY4hUn9w06zQKbhKBfvjFU CsdFlb6TdQhxb9RXWXuI4t31c+o8fYOv/s8q1LGPga3DE1L/tHU4LENMCAwEAAQ,image,~image

Here's how Eric Bishop (the guy behind Trueblock Plus) responds:

Q: It's possible to turn the ads off in AdBlock plus, isn't that good enough?

A: No, it's not. Defaults are very powerful things, most people never touch them. People react very differently depending whether a choice is presented as “opt-in” vs “opt-out.” The creator of Adblock Plus knows this, saying that enabling ads by default is “the only way to reach the goals.”

Q: Adblock Plus claims their “goal” is to prevent the loss of advertising revenue to meaningful and important sites that rely on it for survival. Isn't that a good thing?

A: Maybe, but that explanation neatly side-steps the real problem. The problem is that I want to be able to decide for myself which sites are meaningful and important. When Adblock’s “acceptable” ads are enabled, the user is not the one deciding which sites get a pass and which do not, the owners of Adblock Plus are. That is a huge problem. The person that controls this “acceptable” list can sell a spot on the list to the highest bidder, making a profit by violating your trust. While impossible to prove, it seems likely the real motivation behind this feature is greed and has nothing whatsoever to do with any sort of altruistic desire to preserve websites that depend on advertising revenue.

This is the list of current “acceptable” ads, as defined by Adblock Plus. This list includes text advertisements on Sedo parking domains, a giant company that sells domain names, and publishes advertisements on unused domains. This is hardly a poor little website where meaningful content is in danger of disappearing because no one will view their advertisements.

The latest versions of Adblock Plus allows so-called "acceptable ads" by default. Because the extension author's idea of "acceptable" advertising includes third-party scripts and cookies, it's possible this new "feature" could eventually expose you to drive-by malware downloads or tracking cookies.

Thankfully, Adblock Plus is open source and a fork without the "acceptable ads" feature enabled has appeared: Trueblock Plus.

I just checked the ads on Slashdot: animated ads (a squirrel on a trampoline), and large banners in bold colours. A long way from what Adblock Plus considers acceptable, and something that I'd find would distract from reading the content (which, I'm arguing, is what needs to happen if the content is in any way compelling).

Not only that but Slashdot content is mainly user-submitted and user-curated. Slashdot supports a handful of editors, coders, and salespeople — the latter only needed because they need to sell ads, mainly to companies that the stories are about (a conflict of interest). Sites with a lot more original content, like newspapers and magazines, are really struggling with funding their work solely from online advertising. So they're not only running more and more intrusive ads, and ads that look more and more like content, there's a big move to introduce paywalls. Unobtrusive ads aren't going to save them.

Or, if you don't like the "Acceptable Ads" "feature" that Adblock Plus added in version 2.0, which has the potential to expose you to tracking cookies and malicious scripts, one can use Trueblock Plus instead.

Save you a bit of searching:
EasyList Ad Blocking List - http://easylist-msie.adblockplus.org/easylist.tpl
EasyPrivacy Tracking Protection List - http://easylist-msie.adblockplus.org/easyprivacy.tpl

Save you a bit of searching:
EasyList Ad Blocking List - http://easylist-msie.adblockplus.org/easylist.tpl
EasyPrivacy Tracking Protection List - http://easylist-msie.adblockplus.org/easyprivacy.tpl

which will pretty much guarantee that site lands on my permanent "do not visit" list.

I doubt the site hugely cares or they wouldn't have taken action in the first place though the more diplomatic might attempt to explain to you that the content costs money to produce and host and that money is derived from ad revenue.

Tell me, though, what's the difference between "freeloader" and "person who wants the web to operate at a decent speed with all this here bandwidth available"?

None to the site you're visiting unless your user agent said you were using a mobile or something. You're a freeloader. And what about their bandwidth you're leeching without any intention or possibility of compensating them for it by viewing or clicking ads?

Like others have said, if "you" or "your site" serve ads that aren't obnoxious, Flash(®)y, popping up/under/over/down/in/out, data-collecting, page-grabbing, content-masking, survey-taking, usage-tracking, loud, seizure-inducing, eye-bleeding, *totally* inappropriate, or just downright frackin' toxic, then I just might consider easing up on the ad filter for your site.

Extensions like AdBlock Plus let users subscribe to block lists. e.g. EasyList. These lists are not set up on the basis of "obnoxiousness", rather they filter out stuff emanating from virtually every ad provider and metric site based on hundreds of regular expression filters. So I don't accept your premise that a) all sites with advertising are obnoxious, b) most people using an ad blocker even bother to test the site with ads to see if it is obnoxious or not. So the ad blocker catches "good" ads along with the bad. e.g I expect most people consider google text ads to be fairly innocuous and low bandwidth but they're hoovered up with all the rest.

Yes, but at least the adblock author doesn't mess with other software on your computer like the Noscript guy.

http://adblockplus.org/blog/attention-noscript-users

http://hackademix.net/2009/05/04/dear-adblock-plus-and-noscript-users-dear-mozilla-community

They didn't got paid for now, but

I don't think that we get anything yet but we indeed hope to get some income this way to make the project sustainable.

https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8872&start=30#p53166

I didn't lie, and he secretly disabled other software on users computers.

You might want to bother checking some links before spouting off.

http://adblockplus.org/blog/attention-noscript-users

http://hackademix.net/2009/05/04/dear-adblock-plus-and-noscript-users-dear-mozilla-community/

This is clearly a move to drive change to a point where advertising is present but less intrusive (and also more ethical, i.e. not using psuedo-OS dialogue boxes to fool the gullible).

No. It is clearly a move to attempt to make money from what is perceived to be a captive audience that will not notice.

I don't mind people wanting to make money. However, I see a clear conflict of interest here, when then interests of the source of such money are orthogonal to the actual users of the product.

          dZ.

Shady people, shady deals.

... or it could simply be an acknowledgement that -- like it or not -- the web runs on advertising and allowing a bit of it in might not hurt you if you wanted to be more ethical. Ever thought about how small non-profit websites can afford to keep their domain names? In any case, the Adblock Plus devs have long been clear that one of their aims was to change advertisers' behaviour. This is clearly a move to drive change to a point where advertising is present but less intrusive (and also more ethical, i.e. not using psuedo-OS dialogue boxes to fool the gullible).

Anyway, as long as the option to turn all advertising off is present (and it clearly is) then I can't see how this hurts you or anyone else. But hey, if you don't like it, don't use AdBlock Plus.

Where does it say Google? It's not officially on the list of sites they're blackmailing/selling adspace to. Of course Palant could be grooming himself for a deal with Google, but that's speculation. There's no mention of Google anywhere.

I don't think his code is GNU licensed though? If it was his intent to keep it free, that would be the project's home.

It is open source though
http://adblockplus.org/en/source#build

You can grab a build w/o the feature, build it ??? no more opt out. '

I can't help but compare the ethics of this case to that of firefox's and that's because we use it for free, what I learned from those threads is it's free, use it if you like, we aren't forcing you, you can bitch but you get no say in the features so just accept it. This seems to be the new open source standard, there is no more reliability in open source ethics at least on the windows side (never was much to start).

Shady ways? You must mean Noscript that likes to update to load it's ad-filled update page and at one time whitelisted itself on Adblock+. If you are going to accuse the Adblock+ developers, then have the decency to include a link!

Google ads apparently aren't unblocked (yet), but someone on Hacker News asked the developer earlier and apparently monetization is part of the plan:

I don't think that we get anything yet but we indeed hope to get some income this way to make the project sustainable. This doesn't mean that paying us is the requirement to be added to the exceptions list - the requirements a formulated here and they will probably become more precise as we gain experience (suggestions are welcome). As to Google: no, they have nothing to do with it. We didn't talk to Google, we didn't take money from them, there is no conspiracy here. We did look at Google Ads as a typical example (unblocking them is the most common request we get yet most people lack the knowledge for that) but they don't meet our requirements at the moment. Google's search ads are a different thing and they can meet our requirements depending on how the website configures them - and we did add an exception for them on one particular website.

The summary fails to cite some of the core reasons for the complaints, which are that this feature will be enabled by default as well as the fact that the Adblock project is hoping to make monetary agreements with advertisers.

"There still isn't a fully functional equivalent of AdBlock Plus even"
Yes there is... https://adblockplus.org/en/chrome

From the same page you referred to:

We are currently working on providing the same experience for Google Chrome as what you are used to from Firefox. Please keep in mind that we are not there yet and much work still needs to be done. There are also known Google Chrome bugs and limitations that need to be resolved.

Is there hate?

Slashdot is oozing hate for Firefox these days.

I have stopped using Firefox on a few different machines simply because it has experienced problems which were not replicated under Chrome

And most complaints seem to be anecdotal rather than linked to a verified bug report. I've never seen issues that some people have, despite my use of an ancient Firefox profile and being on Nightly at home and Release at work.

Yes there is... https://adblockplus.org/en/chrome

Does it actually prevent downloads or does it still just cut off downloads half way, resulting in small downloads going through then being hidden, and always allowing the HTTP request to go through?

"Beyond that, all this Firefox hate is ridiculous."

Is there hate? I have stopped using Firefox on a few different machines simply because it has experienced problems which were not replicated under Chrome... I'm not specifically avoiding any browser beyond IE, but won't be likely to switch back until Chrome begins to experience problems which are not replicated under Firefox.

"There still isn't a fully functional equivalent of AdBlock Plus even"
Yes there is... https://adblockplus.org/en/chrome

Adblock+ works perfectly well for facebook just like it does for most other sites. I suppose an opt-in system is better, but adblock covers pretty much all websites while this half measure covers only facebook.

Funny you are writing that in response to an extension which had deliberately and silently killed other extensions.

http://adblockplus.org/blog/attention-noscript-users

Don't depend on the author of NoScript to play nice. He's not one of the good guys.

I second the ABP and would point out it also Chromium based as well as Firefox. I have noticed since giving my users Comodo dragon with ABP that not only do they have a faster nicer web experience, thanks to no ads dragging them down, but the rates of infection have frankly dropped right off the chart.

I give MSFT credit for making Windows 7 pretty damned good about blocking bugs but the combination of Dragon sandboxing the browser with ABP getting rid of the malware laden ads it has made viruses, at least for my customers, pretty much a thing of the past. Now the only bugs I see are "Forest Gump" social engineering bugs where they wave the right cookie in front of the user and get them to bypass security FOR the malware. The worst I've seen lately is "The New Limewire" which is a bunch of malware wrapped up in a gnucleus client, nasty stuff.

As for TFA that was awfully stupid of them, not to mention more than a little pointless. I don't know if my customers are typical but many of them live in FB so tracking them would be kinda pointless. Besides if they wanted to do that why not just offer a toolbar like everybody and their dog does? From what i've seen if you are stupid enough to agree to your average toolbar EULA you've pretty much agreed to give them keys to the kingdom anyway. I mean with all the money FB generates how hard would it have been to have someone write them a FB toolbar for all the major browsers?

That was a more recent Iron addin then when that article was written, but even then modern versions change very little. With the WebRequest Experimental API and Adblock Plus for Chrome using it in dev builds now, blocking is essential comparable (and unlike beforeLoad, the webRequest API doesn't have a really shitty success rate).

There is also an "Antisocial" subscription for Adblock Plus, from here: http://adblockplus.org/en/subscriptions

Or an extension for most major web browsers, Disconnect http://disconnect.me/

If you use Adblock Plus there's a really nice filter to remove all social media crap, not just facebook. It's called Antisocial and you can find it here: http://adblockplus.org/en/subscriptions (it's at the very bottom in the Miscellaneous section).

That is actually a problem with the basis for this, Add Block Plus. http://adblockplus.org/en/ Which is why, while I use it, I do not use the built in lists. Go figure that the feature I am promoting in my shameless ripp off is the one I do not use in the originator. :)

The Chrome add-on API is much more limited and as such doesn't need to change as frequently or as drastically.

It is, which is why there is still no proper equivalent of AdBlock Plus or NoScript in Chrome, and at the rate things are going there never will be.

Really? I have an adblock in Chrome and it works great -- https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom

Not sure what I am missing from the firefox version, but I see no ads so it works great as far as I am concerned.

I also found this adblock Plus http://adblockplus.org/en/chrome

This is the best solution I have found so far:

1.) Install Vidalia: http://www.torproject.org/

2.) Install NoScript: http://noscript.net/ (Ghostery may be ok - but I'm not too familiar). This blocks Flash, Javascript, etc - but you can selectively enable certain content.

3.) Install the EFF's HTTPS Everywhere plugin: http://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
This will default sites like Google to use the SSL version of their pages if is possible - with Tor Exit Nodes being possibly monitored, SSL is your friend.

4.) Use AdBlock Plus: http://adblockplus.org/
This reduces unnecessary traffic through Tor (banner ads, etc).

Run your browser in Private Browsing mode as well and keep you History clean. Firefox has an option to clear this every time you exit. Tools to keep other things clear (Bleachbit on Linux and C-Cleaner on Windows never hurt)

If you are super-duper paranoid, you can use a Full Disk Encryption suite like Truecrypt: http://www.truecrypt.org/

Just make sure to pick a good passphrase (26+ characters) and keep your computer shutdown when you are not around it.

If you want to help out with Tor like me, I donated a share of my bandwidth to run a Tor Relay: https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-relay.html.en

PS I also change my IP address randomly every few weeks Simply changing your MAC address, hostname and then resetting your hardware will do this. Most ISPs do not retain data beyond 6mos so this also doesn't hurt.

PPS Fuck the police (with a cactus).

This works for Google because all of their products draw you into their web space, and you can't avoid being presented with Google Ads.

What are these "Google Ads" of which you speak? Of course you can avoid being presented with them. Yes, most people don't bother to avoid them, but you can.

less ads.

Print version

No ads.

I'm always dumbfounded to see someone on Slashdot not running ABP, yet I see it fairly often. You'd think the one thing that actually makes browsing the internet bearable to begin with would be at the top of every "nerd's" list.

After the games the author played with the Adblock Plus extension, I simply cannot trust it.

http://adblockplus.org/blog/attention-noscript-users

http://adblockplus.org

Why rate ads when you can block them just as easily?

The patent was filed in 2005. I do hope it doesn't affect this.

http://adblockplus.org

Why rate ads when you can block them just as easily?

Looks like some parts are still impossible.

http://adblockplus.org/en/known-issues-chrome

And lose the plug-in AdBlock Plus? - No thank you!

AdBlock Plus for Chrome.

You don't have to lose it, a version exists for Chrome.

I find this plugin to work even better.

And lose the plug-in AdBlock Plus? - No thank you!