FBI recommends using an ad blocker

It's always an insane experience when you hop on someone's laptop/PC who has zero ad blocking installed.

POV:

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/iV3js9pd5IE

Google has convinced regulatory agencies that they're not responsible for their own complicity with supporting link fraud. I wrote an article about Google's role in enabling link fraud[1], which shows how this is effectively a form of regulatory capture.

Here's a particularly salient critique of these very same FBI recommendations, from my article:

> The FBI suggests “Before clicking on an advertisement, check the URL to make sure the site is authentic. A malicious domain name may be similar to the intended URL but with typos or a misplaced letter.” — this is useless advice in the face of unverified vanity URLs

1. https://eligrey.com/blog/link-fraud/

No-JS user here. A disturbing trend noticed in the past two months: can't login anymore to some financial/health services sites (bank/insurance/etc) without disabling all of NoScript - no amount of selective enabling of websites satisfies them, and those websites are using known infractors like Adobe.

In other words, there is code in the backend checking that all tracking/-ware has run on the browser, and refusing to let you login unless you let it all run, while none of it is necessary (as evidenced by older versions - and other sites - accepting only the top site being JS-enabled).

"We either track the living shit out of you, or you don't access the essential services you need, even though technically it is not needed."

I'd like to see society in general become less tolerant of unwanted ads.

The original Google site hit the perfect pitch, where they set a few unobtrusive ones out of the way alongside your results screen. Ironic they pioneered and eventually normalized what is now an epidemic of user-hostile spam all over the web. I feel as a whole we lose a lot more productivity and focus to this than we gain in economic activity.

Meanwhile, Microsoft fights with itself on whether adblocking is good or bad:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge/learning-center/using-a...

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/supported-browser...

I've love to see what happens if ad-networks became legally liable for any scams or malware that they enable.

The counter-argument that they don't need to know their customer/ad and are just dumb-pipes doesn't sit well with me: Them having awareness of ad-content and display-context is ostensibly part of their business model.

P.S.: I don't mean just liable for a part of the damages, although that would be a good start. I mean that if your Aunt Tillie gets served an ad of "Your computer is infected, click here to contact a Microsoft Technican" there should be some negative repercussions for the company, even if your Aunt Tillie is secretly the hacker BakinC00kies and spins up a honeypot.

Previously:

The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34916239

734 points | 2 years ago | 430 comments

Recently, my grandmother got herself scammed when trying to pay her bills, because she clicked a Google search ad for a fraudulent website posing as the local gas company. She lost some money and, of course, some of her personal data as well.

When situations like this happen, I mostly place the blame on ad companies. It’s their product, so it should be their responsibility to prevent abuses. But there is scant regulation, and the ad industry itself has little concern for privacy and data protection. Why would it waste money being proactive and effective against malicious ads?

It is nice to see the government recommending ad blockers. However, it bothers me that it is up to us, users and customers, to deal with the negligence of ad companies.

We still haven’t reached peak Idiocracy.

YouTube/hulu/disney+ still cut to ads instead of displaying them around the border of the content.

Carl’s Jr/Brawndo still haven’t purchased the FCC.

We are pretty close though.

For computer health your PC needs an ad blocker, but also for mental health. At what point will the CDC recommend using it

What's the current status of whole-network blockers that use DNS?

I tried pihole maybe 8 years ago, and it just broke too many websites for me to leave it on for my wife. It really frustrated her.

FYI - this is from December 21, 2022

Wonder if someone would make a YouTube video talking about using uBlock origin to block YouTube ads, citing FBI's recommendation, see if it gets taken down by violation of YouTube's ToS.

PSA: Even among tech minded folks, a surprising number of people are still using adblock which is widely known to use sponsored whitelists to allow companies to bypass the filters.

The gold standard which works as an extension in both chrome and Firefox is uBlock Origin, annoyingly not to be confused with uBlock.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ublock-origin

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ublock-origin/cjpal...

Also be aware that Google continues to add restrictions to extension permissions such that uBlock Origin may not be as effective as it once was.

I must be a strange person because I don’t run any adblocker… if I happen to need to visit an ad stricken site I just toggle on reader mode. Get my info and get out… I never have to worry about clicking on a search result and it doing nothing … but also I rarely visit these ad sites…. For the cookie banners I just inspect and delete the elements when they get in the way…

>Cyber criminals purchase advertisements that appear within internet search results using a domain that is similar to an actual business or service. When a user searches for that business or service, these advertisements appear at the very top of search results with minimum distinction between an advertisement and an actual search result.

Governments should start holding companies that sell ad space responsible for the ads they run. There's no way any company with the resources of Alphabet or Meta should be serving up phishing ads in their search results.

The fact that Google is presently trying to degrade the performance of ad blockers with Manifest V3 is not a good look. This is why we have consumer protection laws.

And in China, using ad blockers is illegal. Go figure.

> Before clicking on an advertisement, check the URL to make sure the site is authentic

Yeah, good luck doing that with all the various tracking links that mask the actual domain. Sometimes I try to click on links from legit account related emails that are blocked by UBO for being part of a tracker/ad network.

I hope the raise of llms searching the web and acting as a middle-man makes websites ridden with ads obselete.

If you've ever looked for a recipe, you'll know how many obstacles there is without ublock. My hate is towards these type of websites.

> Most internet browsers allow a user to add extensions, including extensions that block advertisements.

This may be sadly outdated. Android Chrome and iOS Webkit probably account for majority of traffic nowadays, and neither allows adblock extensions.

Can the FBI now arrest Sundar Pichai for obstructing justice with Chrome MV3?

Jeff Johnson’s “Stop the Script” (iOS, MacOS). Blocks all JS, including inline. If a site doesn’t have a fallback to serve static content or is not readable when I disable JavaScript… I leave.

I make loads of browser extensions, is there any wins that can be had by building another ad-blocker? An manifest v3 compliant one.

Or does unlock origin lite cover everything?

I was thinking continent specific ad blockers etc

FBI has also warned against placement of smart home assistants (e.g. Alexa) in bathroom and bedroom.

What would tip the scales to justify including an ad-blocker in Safari by default?

[2022] - I thought I'd heard this before.

The FBI also suggests using VPNs.

This is where SEO leading to :(

Windows itself is malware.

Adblock would break most websites nowadays. It's commonplace to detect adblock and disable the website if adblock is detected.