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Microsoft, Google, and Amazon Reportedly Pay Adblock Plus to Ignore Ad


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securitybreach
You're not supposed to know it, but Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Taboola have been paying the developers of Adblock Plus to stop blocking ads on their respective websites, according to a paywalled article in the Financial Times. The deals are confidential in nature, though FT says it was able to confirm that they do in fact exist. If true, it raises some questions about the transparency of one of the most popular browser extensions ever made.....

http://www.maximumpc.com/microsoft_google_and_amazon_reportedly_pay_adblock_plus_ignore_ads_2015

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There was also an article on ArsTechnica about this issue. I've used AdBlock Plus for some years now and it seems to have performed well for me, but I have to admit this is making me think twice about maybe looking for something else. What concerns me a little more is that I'm using it on my mother's win7 machine hoping to keep malicious ads away from her. I also run MalwareBytes and Eset Security on her machine, so it's not like I'm relying only on AdBlock Plus, but still . . .

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securitybreach

Apparently you haven't heard about Ghostery

http://www.technolog...he-ad-industry/

 

Yes ghostery is owned by an ad company:

Ghostery is owned by Evidon, a company that collects and provides data to advertising companies. It has a feature called GhostRank that you can check to "support" them. The problem is, Ghostery blocks sites from gathering personal information on you—but Ghostrank will take note the ads you encounter and which ones you block, and sends that information back to advertisers so they can better formulate their ads to avoid being blocked

http://lifehacker.com/ad-blocking-extension-ghostery-actually-sells-data-to-a-514417864

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securitybreach

This is why I removed it a long time ago. DoNotTrackMe is what I generally use these days.

 

I did the same back in 2013 when I first read about this.

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V.T. Eric Layton

I've come to the conclusion that if you want privacy and freedom from surveillance nowadays, you must discontinue your cell phone usage and cancel your ISP contract. After you've done this, throw your computer and your cell phone into the dumpster behind the 7-11 and go live your life again.

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Also don't make wired phone calls nor send letters to anyone.

the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States
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V.T. Eric Layton

Land line phone calls I would agree, but snail mail? I don't think they're opening and reading our snail mail... yet.

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Not opening mail but taking a picture of the front and back of every piece of mail sent in the US.

And there's such an incredible amount of data of all types, I think (hope) they're going to drown in it.
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When I first added Ghostery I read all the small print and did not enable Ghostrank . So after that ,not sure what happens . It just keeps the page uncluttered .

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securitybreach

When I first added Ghostery I read all the small print and did not enable Ghostrank . So after that ,not sure what happens . It just keeps the page uncluttered .

 

The problem is can you honestly trust an ad company to let you opt out of ads>?

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Guest LilBambi

I use Adblock Plus on my Mac, Windows and Linux browsers.

 

You can choose to allow certain types of ad sources such as Google, Amazon, etc. as you wish.

 

I generally choose Malware Blocking and then go into the settings and do not allow the Google, Amazon, etc. sources. Then I enable sources on a one by one basis as needed to be able to browse as I should.

 

I am quite pleased with it and it works on Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and even Internet Explorer.

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