417
Majority of Americans now use ad blockers
(www.theregister.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2024
417 points (100.0% liked)
Privacy
31921 readers
460 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
Chat rooms
-
[Matrix/Element]Dead
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
I'm a bit worried about that other 24%. How expert are they if they don't recognize the risk?
There's some inherent risk in the ad blocker as well, though. If it's an extension, you're trusting that this thing you installed, that can read and modify every website you visit, isn't going to do anything sneaky. Yes, maybe it's open source, but every once in a while something sneaks into open source projects, too. It will get caught, but it could be after the damage is done.
I mean, I use an ad blocker. But I don't think it's unreasonable to value security and not use one.
But by that logic, absolutely everything other than standing still in a fethal position in a dark cave is a cyber security risk.
Are you using an extremely solid version of Linux? Wellllll, sometimes bad actors can push bad code to open source projects! It's a risk!
I mean, it's true. Network-connected devices are inherently a cyber security risk.
Yes, which is why that can't be used as an argument against one specific tool.
The benefits massively outweigh the risks when it comes to open source ad blockers (lets be honest, we’re all talking about uBO), but limiting your attack surface is a very widely practiced concept in cubersecurity, and there’s no situation where it is totally without merit.
Not using a browser extension but loading JavaScript isn't limiting your attack surface
To be fair, I bet some percentage of those that don't use an ad blocker ARE using something like no script and just don't need one as a result.
Even ones that are air-gapped and get their updates via USB are a risk
maybe they don't enable js at all /s
jk, maybe they value fingerprinting over that? even tor browser doesn't have one built in.