Adblock Plus is such a wonderful thing. I would urge anyone who uses Firefox to install it.

Troo. But I kinda have to keep my eye on the ads (as I occasionally write about them, mainly tripping them apart though) so when I surfed in blissful adblock plyus silence, I kinda lost touch with the crap I'm supposed to be talking about. *sigh*

But yeah, it works wonders! Everyone else, please install it!

I'm currently using Typestumple plus to get my spelling extra atrocious.

Huh. Well, how fucking stupid is that? I've finally installed Adblock Plus after reading this.

I actually delayed using it up 'til now, because pop-ups are already handled by my firewall, and I kind of like to be aware of who's advertising where - just out of general curiosity. Plus, I use a few free services that I really appreciate, and don't mind looking at a few ads on those sites in return.

I'd love to know what genius came up with this.

I use ad muncher. It's very effective too.

I've been using adblock for so long that I forget what the normal internet looks like. Everyone once in a while I'll use someone else's computer and think, "wow, what's with all those annoying animated crap?" Flashblock is handy to have too.

I'm just getting really tired of ads that start producing audio without asking first. And double when it can't be turned off. That alone is going to get me to install Adblock Plus right now.

Goddamn this is awesome.

That same drivecleaner bullshit happened to me, one of the many reasons i'm glad to be on mac, and i don't even think i clicked any ad, except probably in some keyboard clutzy way. i've not reinstalled my adblock because it interferes with some things but i thinking about it so very often.

hmmm. Now that I've actually read most all the links, I'm seeing that it's not actually ad companies that are infecting the ads... Except some of them kind of are. Or something. Confused. Confused but blocking.

The ad companies are "hijacked" by allowing seemingly legit banners be broadcast on their ad-network, but then within said banner is this nasty code that hijacks peoples browsers and tries to download crap - or that's what I get from these articles anyway. Like a blinking banner that triggers a redirect however that is supposed to frickin' happen. The ad-networks say that they are innocent since there's so many layers between them and those who advertise on their network "bad guys slip through" or something. The effect is that all banner ad networks are vulnerable to this, and they look like the culprit to webmaster who get complaints from their users about ads that hijack their browsers.

Either way it spells d o o m for banner ads if the networks don't get on fixing this fast and since it's been happening since January already, they're not fixing it fast enough.

Oh and ethylene, the extra creepy is that you don't have to click the ad - I thought at first it was triggered by a mouseover but I've had it happen the second a webpage tries to load.

ps Taz - if it gets more people to use Adblock, that's just good methinks.

Suggestion for anyone using AdBlock - there's an addon to the program called Adblock Filterset.G Updater "This extension automatically downloads the latest version of Filterset.G every 4-7 days. Filterset.G is an excellent set of filters maintained by G for Adblock that blocks most ads on the internet." AdBlock has a filterset of webpages, and this adds to it, making it far more comprehensive. Just install and forget about it.
For those who don't mind a bit of work there's NoScript. This FF addon prevents all scripts from running on a page until you choose to temporarily or permanently allow them. All of the Flash and Java commands are disabled, along with other widgets on the page that link to other sites through ads or scripts in the background. Makes for some really safe websurfing, but every new page you go to you have to allow things to run on them. Can be a bit annoying at times, and isn't for everyone. The Filterset.G, though, is a must-have.

Oh, and there's this - the Extended Cookie Manager. Allows you to change cookie permissions for pages at will without having to open the FF control panel and mess around with permissions.

Thanks, Zack. Installed.

You know, the wording in some of those articles seemed odd to me... like, okay, it's hackers... kind of, or something. Who are either hacking into pages to put blahblah behind banner ads, or posing as regular advertisers submitting bad ads to ad networks... but there's no E-trail, or there is, kinda. But not really. Or they are (who are they?) paying hackers $X per X-many invasions. Or maybe it's the hackers that are paying somebody for invasions (whobody?). Or maybe not.

I just don't know. But it all sounds really messed up.

Note that some of those ads can download tracking cookies onto your computer. Specifically called third-party cookies... Images or other objects contained in a Web page may reside in servers different from the one holding the page. In order to show such a page, the browser downloads all these objects, possibly receiving cookies. These cookies are called third-party cookies if the server sending them is located outside the domain of the Web page. (...) Third-party cookies are used to create an anonymous profile of the user. This allows the advertising company to select the banner to show to a user based on the user's profile. The advertising industry has denied any other use of these profiles. Wiki link.

I've just done a spyware scan on my computer which removed a cookie called "[my name]@2o7 [1].txt". I've added that to my cookie blocker, but why's it there? Probably from an ad. Looking up 2o7 in Google gives me this threat assessment of 3 and another page that confirms that it's a 3rd-party tracking cookie. Not on my computer, thank you. AdBlock has probably caught most of those, and the reason that it got through is the [1] added to the file name. Underhanded. So if they're stooping to these tricks to track my surfing, who's getting the info at the end of it all? While some of the complaining done by legitimate ad companies does have some merit, it's tactics like these that are ruining it for them, and they seem to be unable to address that underlying problem. Until then I'm going to enjoy the white space on the webpages and the decrease in visual noise that not having the ads creates.

taz, it always sounds truly messy whenever something technical about the web needs to be reported, still that WSJ article was the best (non techie) article that I could find on the subject.

And yeay filterset.g I guess, even though "ad-rag.com isn't a large enough site to warrant a specific whitelist entry be created for it." which spurred me to change domains right quick. ;P

note, not sore, just annoyed that the war against banners & spam keeps messing up those who don't since it's a bit like a shotgunblast to filter anything. Should be a word for that.

We're all doomed. And Stupid.

oh wow. great story. curiosity killed the cat indeed....

Ouch - I have seen those drivecleaner ads when helping people with their computers and most of them have clicked on it at least once "just to see". I refuse to help people with their weird computer issues more than once if they refuse to change from IE to Firefox, which I install form them with adblock plus. It never fails to shock me when I use a different computer with all the flashing and the pop-ups and crap - I think "holy shit, I see a completely different Internet to other people".

seanyboy - Interesting story, but not surprising. Which makes me sad.

I'm extremely happy about Privoxy. If AdBlock isn't doing what you want give Privoxy a look.