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Privacy Solutions Series: Part 2 - Adblock Plus

Started by TLF · 10 months ago

By Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka
The goal of our “Privacy Solution Series,” as we noted in the first installment, is to detail the many “technologies of evasion” (i.e., user-empowerment or user “self-help” tools%2 ... Continue reading »

8 comments

  • Ryan Radia

    10 months ago

    Filterset.G (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filterset.G) makes AdBlock even more powerful. It really does a good job of getting rid of ads.

    Another add-on that goes well with AdBlock is NoScript. At first, it's annoying to white-list every trusted site that uses a script, but blocking all scripts by default really does enhance security while browsing.
    reply
  • Adam Thierer

    10 months ago

    Thanks Ryan. I will check our Filterset.G

    Also, Berin and I are planning to cover NoScript in a future entry.
    reply
  • MikeRT

    10 months ago

    Honestly, I just don't know what the big deal is with most people and ads. Maybe it's just the sites I go to, but I rarely see any ads that are ugly and out of place.
    reply
  • Adam Thierer

    10 months ago

    Mike, I am totally with you on that point, but many others disagree with us. There's just a certain crowd out there that find the whole idea of commercial advertising annoying or even offensive and don't really think about the trade-off of what they would be missing without those ads being present. There is no free lunch, after all.
    reply
  • MikeRT

    9 months ago

    Well, when they get there way, and there's no advertising, they'll have to deal with the walled gardens like the online version of the Wallstreet Journal. Ironically, most of the "new media" will be the victims because they're the lightweight journals that have the weakest relationship with their readers when it comes to a willingness to buy access.
    reply
  • Don Marti

    9 months ago

    Don't forget CustomizeGoogle. You can configure it to remove the Google tracking when you click through on a search result.
    reply
  • Wladimir Palant

    9 months ago

    Filterset.G is not recommended for Adblock Plus: http://adblockplus.org/en/faq_project#filterset.g

    What you should look at if you are concerned about privacy, is ABP Tracking Filter (http://adblockplus.org/en/subscriptions). Also, current Adblock Plus development builds implement a $third-party option (http://adblockplus.org/blog/recognizing-third-p...) which gives you a way to block tracking servers in a generic way (also likely to cause collateral damage however so using it in its generic form is only something for the most paranoid).
    reply
  • Ryan Radia

    9 months ago

    This is very interesting, thanks Wladimir. Some of the issues with Filterset.G don't seem to exist for me (like slow browsing) but I will have to try a different set of filters.
    reply

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