Yahoo Mail Forcing Ads Through Adblock?

egNuKe asks: "Like some people here, I use Firefox and Adblock. I've blocked the ads that Yahoo puts in my inbox, however the next time I opened it, I've found other ads, and blocked them too. This happened for several times, until I figured out that Yahoo must have some script that checks if the ad is displayed and displays another one, if it hasn't. This is no big problem, I just needed to add several rules to Adblock to block the several ad sources they use. Here is the problem: when Adblock is running and effectively stopping Yahoo mail ads, Firefox would freeze (all open windows and tabs) for about 15 seconds. Then the page opens and there is no ads. The script must be on client side, since it's the browser that's freezing and not the network. Turning off Adblock solves the freezing problem. Is there a cure for this?" This is a touch-and-go issue as it basically boils down to the user's priority (not seeing ads) versus the services priority (displaying the ads it needs to allow the user to enjoy a free service). It was only a matter of time before someone thought to try and work around ad-blockers, and all this will eventually lead to is open warfare (competing Javascript or browser code in the browser) on your machine. Instead of working around the workaround, why not consider another service that doesn't inundate you with ads?

Comments

Gmail

[Kingrames]

I can send you a gmail invite. that'll fix it.

Re:Gmail

[Threni]

An advantage of using Gmail is you don't send out emails offering the chance to win tickets for last years World Cup in your sigfile. (Yes, I told Yahoo about this; No, I didn't get a reply). I see no point in using a Yahoo account when Gmail offers much more whilst still being free.

Re:Gmail

[dthable]

But Apple says Yahoo mail is the best and they even included it on their new phone. Everyone knows Jobs wouldn't lead us astray.

Re:Gmail

[ubernostrum]

Got an actual source for that? All the hysteria I've ever seen has been fueled by people who misinterpret the Gmail terms of service to mean "we never delete anything" instead of "this stuff's stored on distributed redundant clusters, so sometimes there's a lag between hitting delete and the message disappearing".

GReasemonkey

[AuMatar]

You could run a greasemonkey script to remove the script causing all this.

Re:GReasemonkey

[Arker]

I am using just noscript. Blocking scripts from yimg.com gets rid of the ads with no freeze-ups. It also, if memory serves, interfered with some function somewhere in mail, although the basics still seem to work. I normally let their ads run, as they aren't very intrusive. Then again I also use gmail for almost everything, and rarely login on yahoo anymore.

Opera

[TheDawgLives]

One trick that worked in Opera was to find out which javascript function was creating the adds and overwrite it. Opera allows you to define a user.js file and any functions in it overwrite the functions in any page loaded javascript. I just created a function with an empty body and I was good to go.

View the ads or find another webmail

[jfclavette]

If I had a website relying on ads and a reliable way to do it, I'd terminate accounts of people with an ad blocker right off the bat. You are using a free service in exchange of which they are putting a bunch of advertisement on your screen. By blocking it, you become a free loader, absolutely useless for them as a customer. If you don't like the business model, pay for your webmail.

Re:View the ads or find another webmail

[Raindance]

If I had a website relying on ads and a reliable way to do it, I'd terminate accounts of people with an ad blocker right off the bat. You are using a free service in exchange of which they are putting a bunch of advertisement on your screen. By blocking it, you become a free loader, absolutely useless for them as a customer. If you don't like the business model, pay for your webmail.

I would disagree for two reasons:

1. That's not true that adblockers are complete freeloaders on the Yahoo network. Attached to every mail you send from Yahoo is an advertisement for Yahoo Mail. That's presumably worth something- very possibly more than the ads you're blocking (especially as the type of customer who blocks ads is not likely to click on them).

2. Yahoo simply can't do this. People would scream bloody murder if their email- their online identity- was terminated. Bad, bad publicity and a quick erosion of trust for very little gain.

Personally? I'd switch to gmail. They've never pulled any shenanigans on me.

Re:View the ads or find another webmail

[L7_]

when you download your gmail to a pop3 reader, do you get the other stuff in the column that comes with the ads? Like the auto-parsing of any addresses in your email with a link to thier site on maps.google.com, auto-parsing what it sees as DHL, FedEx or UPS tracking numbers with a link to those web tracking services, or parses any dates and descriptions and links directly to adding them to your google calendar, or even better yet linking news site articles that have content that actually is relevant to the discussion?

Thats what gmail does for me, and why I use the web interface.

Re:View the ads or find another webmail

[Arker]

Yahoo decided awhile back to remove POP access from free accounts. You now have to pay them for that access. While gmail gives it to you for free, then makes the web interface useful to you so you won't want to...

Re:View the ads or find another webmail

[RareButSeriousSideEf]

It is bizarre, and I'm a bit baffled and academically curious to explain it myself. It's a pretty recent thing, and it's only in GMail.

I think it has something to do with a perceived disparity between GMail's pages vs. the 'average' web page in terms of (a) their elegance & simplicity, and (b) the usefulness of their incidental / extraneous content.

Perhaps I'm too accustomed to the "manual approach," i.e. avoiding links altogether, typing command lines & URLs instead of using bookmarks, typing search phrases instead of clicking search links, etc. By the intelligence of their offerings, Google has challenged some of my entrenched habits; for instance, I now search for addresses on Google proper & then click the resulting "Google map" link, instead of going to Google maps to type the address in. This approach adds a bit of address correction on the front end, I can type my text into a single search box instead of having to split it up into separate fields, and it's available right from [Ctrl + k] in Firefox.

I was also in the habit of copying UPS, USPS and FedEx tracking numbers & navigating to their respective tracking URLs to paste & track, and that for some time after Google started parsing those references & hyperlinking them automagically. That was a matter of muscle memory, most likely; in the back of my mind I *knew* Google parsed & linked those, but I would already be on UPS's site before I really became conscious of the fact that I could have saved steps by just using the link.

Maybe now I'm forming a new pattern of web behavior that's Google (or GMail) specific. I'm not sure, but after enough instances where the "Google way" turned out to be simpler than "my way," I'm starting to reflexively look for the "Google way" more and more.

I think that unlike most other companies -- who constantly try to find ways to jam more annoying bs into my field of attention -- Google has consistently surprised me with stuff that's actually useful & time saving. My old habits were borne of the former kind of web experience. So ultimately, I think Google's behavior has caused me to have a different (better) set of expectations regarding their incidental content.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to find out if Nextag has Fourier transforms in stock & ready to ship...

I just don't understand some of you

[GweeDo]

I personally do have Adblock installed on my machine here, but I only use turn it on for sites that uses ads in a way that are obtrusive. Think of those lovely sites that uses flash to overlay ads that you have to figure out how to get rid of. Those sites, sure. But think of something like /. here. The ads don't get in the way. But they also let the service continue to be free for me. I won't block /. ads unless they start doing something to get them in my way.

Now, there is a somewhat person reason for this for me too. I am starting up a new gaming company that will depend on ad revenue on the site to survive. If people block it, we will die off. We won't ever put ads in the way, but some people just can't stand to let us make money for a free service to happen.

I just don't understand some of you.

Re:I just don't understand some of you

[Kelson]

I won't block /. ads unless they start doing something to get them in my way.

Agreed there. If an ad interferes with reading the site, or blares audio without asking me, I'll block it. I remember one site that had a pair of interesting articles (about website usability, ironically enough) that had so many ads it was almost impossible to read. I blocked all the ads, read the two articles, then never returned to the site.

With most of them, it's just as easy to tune them out.

Oddly, the only ads I can recall clicking on in the last year or so are on a handful of webcomics that I read. I wonder if that says something...

Re:I just don't understand some of you

[fotbr]

I don't buy based on ads. I don't do research based on ads. Why should I waste my bandwidth, AND YOURS, loading ads that are not going to result in a sale, or even a click for that matter? Bandwidth costs money. You should be thanking me for blocking ads and saving your business money, since there was no possibility of me clicking on the ad anyway.

And yes, I even block google ads, even though they are the least annoying. I still won't click them, so why bother with them in the first place?

Re:I just don't understand some of you

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, there is a somewhat person reason for this for me too. I am starting up a new gaming company that will depend on ad revenue on the site to survive. If people block it, we will die off. We won't ever put ads in the way, but some people just can't stand to let us make money for a free service to happen.

I just don't understand some of you.

Let me try to help you understand. First, consider that not everybody blocks ads. If you run a site that depends on
ad revenue, you will have some people downloading and viewing your ads, but you must accept that not everyone will.
Some of us really dislike ads, and some of us even believe that the web is a one-to-many publishing medium that exists
for people to express themselves with, not for people to try to make a go of business ventures that are so pathetic that
the only way they can survive is if everybody that visits their site views their ads.

Second, the way that some sites display ads is simply unacceptable. When I point my web browser at www.domain.com,
I am expressly downloading content from www.domain.com, and from nowhere else. If that site attempts to trick my
browser into requesting files from any other domain, it is pissing in the wind. I guarantee this behaviour with
any browser I use via a custom proxy, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Keep that in mind if you want to
embed ads in your pages. You had better plan on managing those ads yourself, because some people's browsers are
not going to fetch them from anywhere else.

Finally, you need to come to grips with the fact that some people believe that the web would instantly become a
better place if all sites that depended on ad revenue vanished. Granted, a lot of useful and popular sites would
disappear, but I assure you that equally useful sites would fill their places. There were excellent free search
engines before google, and there would be again.

If you cannot survive with web surfers exercising their ability and right to control what HTTP requests they do and
do not make, then kindly release your domain name as you die.

Dear Slashdot,

[The Mysterious X]

I signed up for a service that is paid for by displaying advertisments.
I am trying to avoid my side of the bargin by blocking the ads, however, the service provider seems to have prevented me from doing this easily.
Can anyone help?

Re:Dear Slashdot,

[LunaticTippy]

You are painfully loyal to these corporations. They can change the terms of service at any time. They won't hesitate to make the service more annoying and profitable if the mood strikes.

I don't use Yahoo, but the way I've seen it work at other places is like this:
1. Offer useful, non-annoying service
2. Become successful
3. Make service annoying
4. Poor deluded users are stuck with it, or they can change providers (which often sucks or is simply impossible)

I had an account with mail.com many years ago. They had good webmail and lots of neat-o domain names. Slowly they started sucking until now it makes me want to die using their site on IE. Blinding, flashing, musical, interstitial, repetitous hell. That wasn't the deal. They changed the rules. They get blocked.

Yahoo did the same exact thing, I can guarantee it. They got wise to the getting blocked part, and now they're trying to ruin that too. Fuck 'em. I finally moved away from my mail.com account. I got tired of having to whip up a greasemonkey script every few weeks to deal with their latest retardation. It sucked. I've had that email for 10 years or so. I'll probably lose some important stuff in the future such as forgotten registrations, long-lost friends, etc.

We don't owe these bastards anything. If they can change the rules so can we. Eventually some honest company will come along with a sustainable business model instead of this bait-and-switch bullshit. I'm so sick of having something useful and good grow ad-fucked time after time.

Re:Dear Slashdot,

[The Mysterious X]

http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/utos/utos-173 .html

It's in section 2.

Why not allow it

[vga_init]

I hate ads just as much as anyone else. I certainly hate being subject to "driveby" ads where you happen to visit a web page once in your life for no important reason (ie check out a story linked to by Slashdot), and I would stop at nothing to block those bastards. Yahoo, however, is offering you a pretty valuable service (free web mail), and I assume you enjoy the benefits of having it, so why not let them have their ads? Quid pro quo is not too unfair in this case.

If you really want to get the ads off of your Yahoo mail account, pay them. I have a premium account with Yahoo because my ISP partners with them to provide all the web services. I log in--no ads! It's not too shabby.

Use the options

[dantal]

in addblock just click the radio for hide add instead of remove add, the add are still downloaded but you don't see them

Interesting, considering...

[Anonymous Coward]

I just had an ad come up when I clicked on this article. Not a popup, but one of those annoying things that layer across the content. It smacked up right in the middle of the web page and asked me if i wanted to take a survey.

I had a choice of hitting Yes, or I guess letting the ad sit there blocking my viewing the content.

There was no close option.

I don't mind ads, but what is the purpose of annoying me?

Filterset.G suckage explained

[pestie]

I used to run Adblock with Filterset.G, but I had a number of problems with this setup:

• Filterset.G didn't include some rules for major sites, like MySpace.
  
• Because of that, I added many of my own blocking rules, which promptly got overwritten every time Filterset.G updated.
  
• The guy who created Filterset.G is an egotistical whiner who didn't like his "hard work" being copied without attribution, so he became a prick about his "licensing terms." This has nothing to do with how well Filterset.G works, but annoys me personally.
  

So I switched to Adblock Plus, which:

• Allows me to subscribe to a non-Filterset.G rule set, which seems to work a whole lot more effectively than Filterset.G ever did.
  
• Allows me to block DOM elements as well as the usual URL patterns, which is incredibly useful for blocking ads on certain sites.
  
• Allows me to create my own rules that aren't overwritten when the subscribed rule list updates.
  

Adblock Plus rocks. There's just no comparison.

Re:All ads are obtrusive.

[hazem]

The whole point of advertising is to scream "OOH! OOH! BUY ME!" louder than the other guy. I don't buy stuff on a whim without any sort of information about it, and I certainly don't trust companies to offer unbiased information on their own products; hence, ads are only a waste of money for them (at least when I view them) and an annoyance for me.

Actually, that's the "old" mode of advertising. Today, it's more about creating a feeling about a product and company - giving a sense of the community you could be a part of. For example, how many advertisements actually tell you anything about the product? There aren't many. Most are about the fun, good-looking, exciting, partying people you will be with when you use the product.

It's also about impresssions. Today you might not be in the mood for some shoes. But, someday you will be, and sadly/strangely/interestingly, there is a correlation between how many impressions of an ad you've seen and which product you actually get. So when you DO want a pair of shoes, the hope is the thought of the company that has the most compelling lifestyle to offer you will pop in your head. When I said "buy a pair of shoes", which brand did you just think of? Nike? Adidas? Asics? Saucony? Whichever one it was "won".

Anyway, look at the ads and you'll see few of them actually describe the product and how you'll use it. Many many more of them are about how cool you'll be, or how much better your life could be because of the product.

seconded

[Nasarius]

Any self-respecting geek should have his own domain. For less than ten bucks a year, you can get a domain with DNS and email forwarding (I use Namecheap, but there are others). Forward everything to a Gmail address, and use POP3 to make a backup.

Privoxy is the solution!

[feld]

Why do you use Ad Block Plus? It just bloats up firefox!

Use Privoxy and force Firefox / Opera through the proxy on your localhost. It filters the ads for you! :)

Also, I just tested -- I created an account on Yahoo and tried regular Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Mail Beta.

I saw no ads. None. Nada.

Privoxy > Ad Block Plus in my opinion. I never see ads thanks to this. And it's less work.

Give it a shot guys.

Whoosh....

[karnal]

Swing and a miss...

Re:related issue

[Guppy06]

"I read somewhere that Microsoft teamed up with CIA to block myspace."

Finally, some good news about the War on Terror!

Re:daydreaming

[oyenstikker]

* Firefix will not adhere to it on principle, but there will be 17 plugins that claim to, 3 of which actually work.
* Konqueror will support it, but 90% of the ads won't show because KHTML properly handles CSS errors but the authors assume a laxer CSS parser. There will be an option to turn it off.
* Opera will not support it because the users don't want it.
* Internet Explorer will claim to support, but there will be the usual embrace, extend, extinguish, and all ads will be replaced with MSN ads.
* Lynx will put a note in the man page that the next version of Lynx will support frames.

Touch and no go.

[billcopc]

TANSTAAFL! Yahoo has ads. Slashdot has ads. Just about every site on the net has ads. If you want email without ads, you can pay a real email hosting company that will provide you with POP3/IMAP/SMTP access for a fee. Heck you can even get that from Yahoo, I think it's 30$ a year or so.. if you had been looking at their ads you would know ;)

But if you want something for free, you have to pay with your eyeballs. Someone has to foot the bill for the web hosting, and the sysadmins, and the time and effort that go into building a site. Or are you one of those guys who gets HBO for free, spliced off your neighbor's cable ?

The ad blocking game is no different from copy-protection schemes, or product activation, or any other undesirable software trait. They're like human viruses; they start out as a minor nuisance (simple banner ads), then you develop antibodies (adblock), then the virus grows stronger (javascript detection), then come stronger antibodies (adblock++.Net 2.0 GT), and then finally the virus grows so strong and belligerant it just plain kills you (ad company buys out Mozilla and makes you watch 2-minute full-screen noisy ads every time you click, then forces you to complete a "short" survey before letting you read the actual page).

I personally don't employ any kind of ad blocking.. yes, it slows down page loads a little bit, but I don't mind it so much. An extra second or two won't kill me, I'm usually multitasking anyways. The sight of ads doesn't bug me, I just scroll past.. every now and then I'll actually see one that catches my interest and click through, because sometimes I actually discover something I like. The only gimmick I use against ads is FlashMute, because the last thing I need is for the neighbors to call the cops on me, from hearing those stupid screaming smilies pumped through my loud stereo.

Yahoo = riding pure inertia

[Pausanias]

Sarcasm well taken, but it seriously is amazing how little Yahoo has bothered to evolve since, oh, about 1999. I can bear text ads but I cannot stand graphical ones. I started using adblock on Yahoo (with my own rules) as soon as it came out (was it around 2002?). And that was with phenomenal success---I blocked all incoming ads with about 15 minutes worth of detective work. Back then I figured it'd only be a few months till they figure it out; and then they will somehow block the blocking. Guess what, five years later I'm still blocking all their ads. Not that I visit their site that often anymore---GMail is my default mail account now.

Here's a few reasons why noone should use Yahoo as their mail system:

• Messages dated to the year 2038 appear in my Inbox rather than getting filtered to Bulk Mail. Huh? Isn't date filtering the most obvious filtering you can do? Turns out you have to pay $20/yr for their "best" Spam filter.
• You still have to pay $20/yr for POP access. GMail is free.
• You get 1GB of space, and have to pay $20/yr for 2. GMail has almost 3GB for free.
• Graphical and flash ads are plentiful in Yahoo mail. You have to pay $20/yr to rid yourself of them. GMail has text ads only.

Don't even get me started on GMail vs. Yahoo maps. Or GCal vs. Yahoo Calendar. Yahoo are not innovating; they are riding the pure inertia of their 1996 early start.

Oh, here's a word for those of you who are moaning about unethical users blocking ads: some of us are truly incapable of tuning out obnoxious banners and flash animations. It realy ruins our internet experience. Don't worry. The sheep will always be there to provide you with advertising revenue. As for the rest of us, if you want to win us over, use text ads only. You will get many more clicks from us, that's for sure.

But Apple says Yahoo mail is the best and they even included it on their new phone. Everyone knows Jobs wouldn't lead us astray.