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Free news sites step up pleas for consumers to disable adblocking software:
If your web browser has recently updated, or you've loaded some new browser extensions, you may be seeing a message when you visit certain free content sites.If your web browser has recently updated, or you've loaded some new browser extensions, you may be seeing a message when you visit certain free content sites.
"Please support journalism by allowing ads," one of the pop-up messages reads.
In the message, there is a large link that will disable the adblocker extension in your browser. There is a smaller link that will allow you to proceed to the site while continuing to block ads.
Dominic Chorafakis, with the cybersecurity consulting firm Akouto, says adblocking extensions aren't exactly new, but it's possible browsers have strengthened them in recent updates.
"Sites that rely on ad revenue, of course, don't like this at all, and there is quite a bit of effort being put in from their side to detect when a visitor has adblocking in place and either ask them politely to disable adblocking or outright prevent them from viewing their content unless they disable it," Chorafakis told ConsumerAffairs.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Wednesday December 23 2020, @10:09AM
Yep. If viewing an ad requires running code from some random third-party site it's no safer than if the site were to ask the viewer to download and run an unknown, possibly (likely) malicious binary. Even assuming you trust the site you're visiting enough to do that, that doesn't mean that trust extends to the websites of every advertiser on the planet. Which is what the "please disable adblock" shit is asking you to do: give code execution rights for your PC to anybody willing to toss a few bucks to an advertising platform.
You want me to view your ads? I will if you can provide them in a safe, sane way. Which means images and text, or fuck off. But nobody does that at all, so I just block everything now, fuck 'em all.
The only reasonably sane ad services I can remember ever seeing were those old text-only ones from Google and a now-defunct advertising service called "Project Wonderful". They worked even when I had JS fully disabled and were largely text or static images, no obnoxious shit. So it's no wonder PW died, it wasn't sleazy enough to live; meanwhile Google lived because it evolved to become the sleaziest of them all.