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AdNauseam Browser Extension Quietly Clicks On Blocked Ads
New submitter stephenpeters writes The AdNauseam browser extension claims to click on each ad you have blocked with AdBlock in an attempt to obfuscate your browsing data. Officially launched mid November at the Digital Labour conference in New York, the authors hope this extension will register with advertisers as a protest against their pervasive monitoring of users online activities.
It will be interesting to see how automated ad click browser extensions will affect the online ad arms race. Especially as French publishers are currently planning to sue Eyeo GmbH, the publishers of Adblock. This might obfuscate the meaning of the clicks, but what if it just encourages the ad sellers to claim even higher click-through rates as a selling point?
I am all for poisoning that well. For those of us who use adblock it won't affect what we see and will cost the advertisers money as they will have to pay the site we visited for those clicks. So really no down side from my perspective.
Time to offend someone
It could be considered click fraud if you used it against your own website that you have advertising on.
But I do agree, if I was an advertiser, and this caught on, they could see a potential spike in clicks, and therefore a big jump in advertisement expenditures.
That might lead to drastically reduced payments per click for websites, or maybe the end of pay-per-click, or who knows what else?
If you were an advertiser you should reconsider using annoying adds.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
I want to block this crap.
I want to block their cookies. I want to deny them the analytics or even know that I visited the page. I want the advertisers to piss off and die.
Sure, you can shit in their well and give them crufty data which is useless.
Or you can just block this crap outright, never see it at all, save your damned bandwidth, and leave the parasites out of the equation entirely.
So, Quantserve? Scorecard Research? Google Ad Services? All that crap which is embedded in every page you see? I'll take tools which prevent them from getting traffic from me or any information in the first place.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I don't see how it's fraud for a user to choose how to voluntarily use a service that they're not obligated to use, when there's no signed contract or even terribly binding agreement between the user and the entity from whom they're retrieving content. If the entity serving the content doesn't like what the user is doing, they're free to block the user.
Remember, these are the same people that complain when you fast-forward through commercials, and have tried to make legal arguments to prevent one from being able to do that.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Well, the reality is ... you as an advertiser don't get a vote what I do in my browser.
You want me to view and click ads? Well, you'll have to pay me. Paying some other guy to embed shit in his web pages which I'm "required" to view? Kind of bullshit, and not happening.
If you're not paying me, then you don't matter, and I don't owe you a damned thing.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
While I personally block _all_ online advertising (and tracking) via various means, I disagree that intentionally breaking per-click model is a good thing. If the AdNauseam gains adoption, it will likely trigger further escalation in tracking. Advertising pays for significant portion of online content, and vast majority of people have to deal with it. If substantial fraction of people are given tools to block and automate click-spoofing, then new and much more draconian ways to track will be developed.
You think flash cookies are bad? Wait until AdNauseam forces Google to cut anti-NN deal with telecoms in exchange of ISP-level in-stream identifier insertion.
Unfortunately, views from clickbait sites are just as valuable as views from quality sites. So, not only do we have ads that are annoying, we are constantly being baited to view content that is stupid.
Have quality, non-annoying, fast loading ads, relevant to the content, placed on quality content/sites, and I will be much more likely to not block them, and in some cases I may actually look at them.
I don't see anything here that suggests this will employ some form of AI to determine which ads would be annoying and only click on those.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I already paid to get on the internet. Comcast gets sixty bucks a month. In addition, I pay to host my own websites out of my own pocket. You aren't entitled to a revenue stream from your website. If the only way you can make money on the web is by pushing malware (which is what all third-party ads are) then you don't belong on the web and should GTFO.
I write sci-fi for metalheads
The website is pretty sparse on the details of what actually happens when this plugin is doing its thing. Unless it's all explained in that paper they posted (which I can't make any sense of, and I'm an IT professional).
Does this plugin simulate a click, or does it actually load the entire target page offscreen, and if so, is there any possibility for recursion here? Suppose there are banner ads on the page being "simul-clicked" on? Does the plugin proceed to them as well? How does this affect bandwidth? And what about security? What happens if that page wants to install the Ultra Monkeys Toolbar in my browser? Is it able to do that? Am I not able to decline or close the offending page before something bad happens because it's all happening offscreen?
Please, developer we've never heard of before, explain to us a bit more why we should trust this plugin. In ENGLISH.
I don't see anything here that suggests this will employ some form of AI to determine which ads would be annoying and only click on those.
Some people are annoyed by all advertising. But other people have the checkbox set to permit unobtrusive ads. Since this extension "clicks" on ads which have been blocked, that means that the unobtrusive ads won't be false-clicked.
I find pretty much all advertising obtrusive. It doesn't necessarily make me buy shit, but advertising does influence mood. Some say only if you are malleable, but I have this nagging suspicion that it's more than that. They say that if you don't yawn when other people yawn, you may be a psychopath. I don't know that not reacting to colors and motions in typical ways makes you a psychopath, but I do think it is related to a lack of presence and alertness. Being brought to a state of alert by motion is a feature, it's what helps permit you to not get run over by some distracted moron in a parking lot for example. But it also means that moving advertisements (for example) are particularly annoying. Advertisers also exploit known effects of color to get attention and influence mood — whether it induces a sale or not, it still affects you. Or, again, if it doesn't it's because you've built some sort of structure in your brain which deadens your sensation. Otherwise, you couldn't possibly watch Ow, My Balls with 8/9 of the screen dedicated to ads.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Adblock by default has the "acceptable ads" feature which is pretty much that. I personally uncheck this box on every customer because they allow Flash ads if they aren't annoying and with flash ads the #1 source of malware it is simply irresponsible to allow them but if you care to support advertisers (which I don't***) then this combined with AB should fulfill that goal.
*** Advertisers, you stupid greedy pieces of shit, you brought this on yourself and deserve your slow death as does anybody on the net who bases their business model around you. For nearly a decade the thought never even occurred to us to block ads because they were just text or JPG hyperlinks or if you really wanted to be fancy a small looping GIF. They were so small and unobtrusive they had a negligible effect on even the shittiest dialup and since they were first party they were actually relevant, a D&D site may have a link to buy miniatures, a site for musicians footpedals and strings. Everyone got along and things ran smoothly.
But then you stupid fucks listened to the MBAs, Master of Being Assholes, who said "Fuck this being nice man, we'll pop up and under, we'll bury the content, we'll slap screaming flash vids on every page so the stupid peasants will give us money just to STFU!". It was YOU that created the pop up/under/over, it was YOU that demanded Adobe turn what was a simple video player into a code running malware delivery system so you could make "punch the clown and win an iPod" style bullshit, it was YOU that added MBs worth of bullshit to every single page, it was YOU that caused pages that should have been one to become seven, it was YOU that made simple cookies into tracking dogs, it was YOU that made pages slow to a crawl as unsecured ads from a half a dozen sites became the norm, it was YOU that made ads the #1 attack vector by not giving a shit about anything but your bottom line, it was YOU that took a business model that worked for a decade and burnt it to the fucking ground with your feces flinging short term outlook, you worthless douchebags!
So as we, the Internet users, do everything in our power to slowly but surely starve you out and make your business model a thing of the past just remember, it didn't have to be this way, it was YOU that shit on everybody and because of this we won't shed a tear, not a single fuck will be given, as you cry and whine about how poor you're becoming. You brought this on yourself, you deserve what you get, you worthless greedy fucktards!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I don't mind simple ads. They are fine with me because I can look at them or not as I please. The ones that flash or jump onto my viewing area or otherwise intrude into what I am doing do annoy me greatly. To the point I hate the people that are selling the shit. It has caused me not to buy products that I might otherwise have bought. To be assaulted by this crap while trying to browse really infuriates me. I can't believe any fool actually buys shit from these people. I would love an extension that clicks these ads in the background. If everyone does it then it makes all their numbers bogus and eventually it could undermine the entire system.
If you put stuff on an URL, and then you make the URL public (and put it on search engines), you are agreeing with the http protocol. The contract is:
"At this URL you can find public and freely available data".
That's the way http works. There is no click through contract to get to an URL and the standard is made so data can be processed easily (there are content, presentation and behaviour separated parts, and each part is designed so it is easy to extract only a subset of it). So, again, clearly the intent of the http protocol design is: "At this URL you can find public and freely available data in a format easy to process so you can use any subset of the data any way you want".
Seen in this way, an advertiser has agreed with the http "contract" by publishing the data. It should be illegal than an advertisher tries to subvert the nature of the http protocol and force you to consume content in a way that further's his interests.
This is similar to what is happening with net neutrality. People trying to subvert the design to convert a protocol into something it is not so to achieve control in the ways the protocol is used, removing control from the actual users of the protocol. They should call it something different, like "filtered internet".
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
How about appending:
yourdamnad.com/?BLOCKEDBY=AdBlock (or whatever)
to the fake click. THEN get the word out that customers should ask for BLOCKEDBY ratios vs. actual clicks.
meh
Agreed.
The basic idea here is that the http protocol doesn't mandate what to do with the information stored on a given URL. That is left to the user to decide.
The thing about this point is that advertisers seem not to have understood this basic concept yet. I have no idea of the quality of the browser extension I linked to in TFA. However the idea that an extension could be used to automate the deliberate poisoning of advertisers collected user data seems to be a powerful one. In my view this is a logical next step in the user vs advertiser arms race.
But other people have the checkbox set to permit unobtrusive ads.
I don't, and everyone I set up doesn't either, and it isn't because I hate all Ads. It's because I hate Removing Adware and viruses.
All of the unobtrusive ad's I've seen from adblock plus contain some link to a malicious download. Don't believe me? do the VLC Test.
1) Turn on Unobtrusive ads
2) Go to Google (or Bing, or Yahoo, Or Ask, ETC.)
3) Search for "VLC Media Player" (As a side note, DuckDuckGo is the few Search engines that do this right, but still serves malicious ads once in awile. Use "Libreoffice" or "Openoffice" Instead of VLC for an example)
4) Click on the first link you see. If the first link you see is an ad, click on it.
5) Download the installer ***WARNING!! Do not run it unless you Enjoy Cleaning viruses for fun!***
6) Go to virustotal.com, and submit the file for analysis
7) Watch the detections go off the charts.
I get roughly 3-7 pc's a week in our shop infected by adware caused by malicious ads that would be otherwise considered unobtrusive. If ad firms would clean up their act, and refuse malicious content ads or obvious scams then I would be more receptive of turning it on. Until then They're no different than a trojan downloader to me.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
Ianal, but even the definition they put in their FAQ states that intent to harm the advertiser is click fraud. The do not track purpose seems like a thin veil over causing massive amounts of false clicks that harm their advertising revenue. We should certainly be able to block what gets served to our computers, but this add-on definitely crosses the line.
Ianal, but even the definition they put in their FAQ states that intent to harm the advertiser is click fraud. The do not track purpose seems like a thin veil over causing massive amounts of false clicks that harm their advertising revenue. We should certainly be able to block what gets served to our computers, but this add-on definitely crosses the line.
That would make it civil disobedience and protest then. It would only be criminal fraud if the intention was for a competitor to gain an advantage, to demand payments for it to stop, or to extract more money from advertising agencies' clients, which AdNauseum doesn't do. It'll be interesting to see how this gets treated by the press who have a vested interest in online advertising.
1. No, it's not click fraud or anything resembling click fraud.
2. This thing only matters if it becomes very popular. Otherwise it's background noise.
3. If it does become popular, it will probably have some kind of detectable signature to it and will get filtered out.
Advertisers really won't give a fuck about this.
William of Ockham had no beard. The most likely explanation is that it was chewed off by squirrels every morning.
If you're in advertising or marketing, kill yourself.
We are eternal, all this pain is an illusion.
Why on earth would it not be worth it? Especially with whitelisting. Unless I have an account with a company there is no reason to have them save data on my machine.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Ads weren't the problem for me. But here are the problems
If you really want to avoid detection and behavior tracking, I highly suggest you entirely disable cookies entirely (yes, I realize this is not worth it at all), otherwise you will not have accomplished what you had hoped.
Self-Destructing Cookies is pretty nice for those who find it impractical to disable cookies entirely.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
True, advertising does serve a useful purpose. The problem is with the people who think it's a good idea to make their ad just a little bit louder, brighter or bouncier than the rest, so it gets noticed more. And then of course the rest of the advertisers, even the well-meaning ones, are forced to make their ads a little louder still. Yes, even the "regular" advertisers do this: television ads have been normalized in terms of dBs and often in compression as well. But those same exact same ads do not behave so well on unregulated channels, such as broadcasters' websites showing repeats of their shows with ads in between. Some of those ads fairly blast out your eardrums, and that's not just laziness on the webmaster's part for failing to adjust the volumes properly; those ads also have extreme compression (for higher perceived loudness) that is absent from the televised versions.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
def is_annoying(ad):
# Problem too trivial to need AI.
return ad is not None
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
I'd at least wait for the user to execute a script on my landing page before counting click-through type payments.
It would only be criminal fraud if the intention was for a competitor to gain an advantage, to demand payments for it to stop, or to extract more money from advertising agencies' clients ...
It might be illegal for merely trying to interfere with business between others (website and advertiser). Tortious interference.
I was about six years old when I received a t-shirt with a logo on it (a Nike swoosh, I think, or something similar). I don't know where it came from but somehow I had the maturity to ask whether I would get paid to advertise for that company.
I still feel the same way. If Tiger woods can get ten million dollars for wearing a Nike swoosh, then I can get paid ten dollars for wearing a Nike swoosh. Otherwise I'm not going to wear a logo unless I personally already love the logo for some reason.
Fuck you, advertisers. Fuck you.
But the example is flawed.
The very first links are to the official videolan site.
Further down the page, you have softonic.com, filehippo.com, downloadastro.com, win-install.com, 01net.com, safe-setup.com (if you believe that, well ...), keweek.com, etc. Download at your own risk.
Now, as for the whole topic of click fraud, it's been known for years that between 25% and 50% of all clicks are fraudulent ("you can make money surfing the net" pay-to-click scams, bots, competitors, etc). Knowledgeable advertisers have already baked in that number into their budgets.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
For example, Fraud from bots represents a loss of $6 billion in digital advertising @Reuters says
I think getting "clicks" from actual targeted customers is a non-problem in the face of all this other fraud. When it comes to security research (my field), more information pretty much always leads to better verdicts. It's therefore quite reasonable that you want to crawl an extra step deep in order to vet a page you're on. This isn't even unprecedented; think of the browser link prefetching, which anticipates where you'll click and downloads content ahead of time.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
The addon user did not give explicit permission to the advertising companies to do business with the website through himself. Websites generally don't even have EULA. If they then are prevented from doing this questionable business through non-consenting parties, that should be fine.
My understanding is that tortious interference is about a 3rd party (the user in this case) interfering with business between others (website and advertiser). The third party does not need to be part of any agreement in order to be interfering. Users of this addon might be at risk if so.
Do the people you named hire MBAs and SEOs which teach them to be annoying cunts? if so they can DIAF with the advertisers. Which since I wasn't clear I will elaborate that when I say "advertisers" I don't mean little Suzy putting up an ad for her bake sale I mean those Madison Avenue pricks that took what had worked perfectly well and took a giant sheeeeit all over it to squeeze some short term gains at the expense of everybody else.
Don't want to be a hated festering pustule on the ass of the Internet and still advertise? Then follow these simple rules and nobody will hate you, in fact you might even see people supporting you and pointing you out as a model citizen...1.- FIRST PARTY ONLY, when you hand control to a first party you might as well say "I'm too lazy to give a fuck about my viewers, please give them malware" 2.- NO FLASH ADS, see rule 1 as why that is a bad idea, 3.- NO JAVA ADS, again see rule 1. 4.- NO SOUND ADS because there is nothing that will make you hated than ruining a nice quiet surf with a loud ad, you might as well have farted in the person's face as both are equally obnoxious and rude. 5.- NO POP UPS, see rule 4 for why that is a no no.
Follow these simple rules and not only will nobody hate you but by default both adblock and adblock plus (even adblock edge) won't block you as they'll just think its content. But I advise everyone to remove the ABP "acceptable ads" filter as they allow flash ads and you might as well just remove your AV and start surfing topsites if you are gonna allow flash ads, they are the #1 source of malware by a country mile. in fact I've cut the infection rate of my customers by over 90% simply be blocking flash ads, yes they are THAT nasty.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Again, the main point is that auto clicking can have unintended consequences. Its naive to think its just going to screw up advertisers and not provide and entirely new avenue for exploitation.
Shouldn't it be fairly simple to write the plug-in to "click" on ads, download the ads, and then direct the download results straight to /dev/null? Downloading an ad shouldn't have to mean actually interpreting the data or rendering anything and certainly not executing any downloaded JS code; all the advertiser needs to know is that you've "clicked" on something (which means you've downloaded it); they don't know that you didn't actually look at the ad.