Why we introduced Ad blocker to Vivaldi browser
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Enabled the "Block trackers" already for a few days, and this is what I notice:
- The tracker protection often (almost always?) seems to result in blocking ads as well
- dnes.bg (a local Bulgarian news site) has 6-8 trackers blocked
- bbc.com has 6-8 trackers blocked
- cnn.com has 33 (!!!) trackers blocked
- One site told me "it seems you have an ad blocker, consider donating to us"
Is this "ad-devastating" effect really the one expected for "Block trackers"?
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@vladimirg Yeah, it's expected. The ads being blocked are tracking ads, which come from blacklisted domains. In case of CNN it's likely that a single request is being blocked repeatedly over time and therefore the count goes up. You can see similar behaviour on many sites.
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Have someone of you tried built-in adblock on bing?
I think it doesn't work well.... -
@realsaaw , it is true that the Vivaldi blockers are still in 'beta' and it is still necessary to use apart some scriptblocker as an extension.
But who are you looking for with Bing? Just like Google and Yahoo, it is the first thing I usually delete from the search engine list.
It is a bit contradictory to want a browser that protects privacy and on the other hand use these search engines.
Neither TOR with a VPN can offer privacy, if you search with Bing or Google -
Hackers have breached 60 ad servers to load their own malicious ads:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/hackers-have-breached-60-ad-servers-to-load-their-own-malicious-ads/
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@petersaints
An open store, which not just links to the vendor specific stores like add0n.com is a must. Now that we have a more or less cross-platform extension API, we need a free and open source distribution platform as well. -
@Catweazle well, this is exactly it.
"Browser outdated" message is not a threat. It's another tool to scare user. The same with 80,000 new viruses and exploits. It sounds scary, but what that number really means? What is the scale? It just goes on and on ...
How long you can use not updated browser + OS before you get burned? (the answer is YEARS) ... ironically, pacman is updating everything in my laptop while I'm typing thisOf course this is not meant against Vivaldi. Vivaldi has at least the decency not to force me to update at the minute when the new version is available. (it's also reason why I hate FF)
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@jrucki , 80.000 new malware/day is not a fake, it is even a downward estimate.
https://www.av-test.org/en/statistics/malware/
https://www.comparitech.com/antivirus/malware-statistics-facts/ -
You guys are the best! Thank you!
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Just a quick note to say I always block everything and do not feel even slightly guilty about it. If a site denies me access, I don't care, I just go elsewhere; if the site disappears through lack of ad-revenue, good riddance.
- It's my bandwidth I'm paying for. I decide what gets to use it up.
- It's my hardware. I decide what code it runs.
- Until ad-networks clean up their act and stop tracking me and serving malware, it's too risky to let them display anything.
- Until website operators stop passing the buck to the ad-networks they won't get any revenue from the ads on their pages. It's a cop-out to say "I have no control over what ads the the ad-networks serve". The website operator is the one who chooses to employ the ad-network and embed their trash onto their pages in the first place. They can show me ads on their pages when they vote with their feet and move to ethical/responsible ad-networks. An ad should be a static image of 100kb or less, with no javascript, tracking cruft, audio or animation.
- I'm a creature of habit, so ads do not influence anything I buy online or offline. I never click them, so absolutely no money is made from me viewing them, only wasted (their bandwidth and mine). An ad-blocker therefore saves both me and the ad-network money.
Quite frankly, I don't care if a site or service can't exist without showing ads. If its content can't stand up on its own merit, it's not worth viewing anyway. Either switch to a subscription/partnership/donation model, or die. A lot of site owners moan that if they implemented a paywall, people would just get the same content elsewhere. Well, if that's the case, their content isn't special or unique, so shouldn't exist anyway. How about valuing quality over quantity instead?
More ethical, trackerless advertising is entirely possible. It's probably more accurate because it's contextual. DuckDuckGo and Qwant seem to manage it. Why track someone and attempt to sell them something they already bought last week, when you can just use the context of where they are when they see the ad? For instance, if someone is browsing reviews of motorcycle helmets, it doesn't take a genius to see that appropriate ads would be for... gasp ....motorcycle helmets! - (and also gloves and high-zddp motor-oil). And if those ads are static images with no script, even better: you reduce the risk of malware transmission and don't waste peoples' bandwith.
Going off on a slight tangent: I can - and do - pay/donate for quality services where possible and appropriate. And I also appreciate those few people who run sites out of their own pocket, just for the love of whatever subject their site is about. Even I was one of them at one time. They're a dying breed, but were incredibly common in the 1990s and early 00s.
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Millions of websites, from tiny blogs to huge publications, depend on advertising revenue in order to operate.
what kind of crazy hosters do they use that they need to cover cost with ads?
there are countless of free hosters, blog hosters, and extremely inexpensive hosters.
unless you are running a MMORPG game server or a huge platform with massive traffic (at which point you don't rely on ads anyways), hosting is basically free.
you can get decent hosting on which you can do pretty much anything for less than $5 a month.
SSL and domains are practically free, too, unless you want a weird TLD.nobody who is not making their living with ads does rely on ads.
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Really happy to have it. It makes the Android browser much more competitive. I prefer to leave it on by default, and then disable for sites I visit frequently. With the advent of web monetization: https://webmonetization.org/docs/getting-started and services like Scroll, we hopefully won't need to block so much of the web in the future.
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It is nice, but I don't fully understand what is the best choice when, like me, someone wishes to let ads that doesn't decrease the security of its browsing display into website, but want to block potentially malicious ads. I just understand that there's an option to block intrusive ads (I still don't know if it needs to choose the internal ad blocker option of Vivaldi to works). What is the best way to allow ads that are safe but block those that can arm my pc?
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@JSeb Welcome to the Vivaldi Community
The best way is to disable the ad-blocker on sites you trust, and that you want to support. But keep tracker-blocker enabled, there is no need for trackers to support a site.
The setting under Privacy "Block ads on abusive sites) should also be enabled.
Oh and just seeing ads cannot really "harm" your PC. Don't click on them, don't believe what they tell you, and never ever install anything through an ad. And run a good anti-virus just in case
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@pathduck: Thanks for the precision! I'll do this for sure.
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@Steffie , hi, nice to see you again. Yes, although there is less Linux malware circulating, there are, too, and there is no decent Linux AV.
In the network you have to have eyes at the nape of the neck and not trust even your shadow, the SO is the least of it.
It's like trusting Google Play Protect in Android, which is basically useless. -
@Catweazle said in Why we introduced Ad blocker to Vivaldi browser:
not trust even your shadow
Oh definitely! I stopped trusting that disreputable thing years ago... i found it kept going behind my back.
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Please give us a manual option to list cashback sites as an exception.