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It garbles advertisers' data as a result, but you must disable uBlock Origin to run it; they can't work simultaneously. I recently moved to it and, so far, am never looking back!

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[-] fossilesque@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

I've used this for a while. Also, I love filling out corpo surveys because I feed them bad data. It's the little acts of chaos.

Another great extension:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fake-data-haterapps/

If they want real information, they can pay me, and even then, well... :) Don't work for free.

[-] joshchandra@midwest.social 2 points 5 days ago

Ha, this is as hilarious as it is creative. Interesting find; got any more?

[-] fossilesque@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Depends on the situation really, it makes me feel the joy of a naughty child. Roll with it. Where you can feed people bad data, do it. Where you cannot, strip it and block it. Obtusify and randomise how your computer connects to the internet (browser spoofs, VPNs, SPN, etc.), use containers (Firefox), support others breaking rules (https://snowflake.torproject.org/), contain your applications (https://safing.io/), spoof things like location etc. This is my little everyday act of anarchism. If people want to fight back against this bullshit, they should learn to stop complying with the folks putting everyone and everything in boxes. People are so used to mindlessly complying. It's my nerdy kind of fun. Make your phone & computer a poisoned apple when you have time.

[-] joshchandra@midwest.social 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Dang, I had no idea of Portmaster! I wish I talked to you years ago and will check these out, thanks, and I fully agree with your stance as well.

[-] pyre@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

I don't know, just sounds like I'd be contributing to the marketers metrics so they can show "it works". it'll only make them invest in ads more. if anyone thinks capitalists are these genius level manipulators who know how everything works I only refer to the richest person alive being the least charismatic, least knowledgable, unfuckable troglodyte who keeps making an ass of himself.

if any of these companies suffer any losses or reduced profits they'll just fire hardworking people, not one of them will turn around and say maybe the ads aren't working when you actively work to show them that it is working.

[-] joshchandra@midwest.social 2 points 5 days ago

... until they keep having to dismiss people and go, "... huh." This is a marathon we're playing. You certainly don't have to use it, but I think the philosophy makes sense, especially given how AdNauseam doesn't click on acceptable ads that don't track you.

[-] pyre@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

they will never go "huh". you give way too much credit to corporate management.

[-] dantheclamman@lemmy.world 6 points 6 days ago

Just curious- if ads are for something illegal, couldn't this expose me to liability for theoretically "clicking" it from my IP/device? And if ads are for something unsavory ( like a "chat with local cougars" site or something similar), wouldn't they start to deliver me more such ads, thinking, wow this IP is the only one clicking every sex chat ad, send them more!

[-] RvTV95XBeo@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 days ago

How many websites do you browse with links to truly illegal content?

If you live in a country with truly abysmal human rights, definitely don't bother with this plugin, but in most cases you should be fine on the illegal side.

Even if somehow the website you're browsing has some super sketchy ad to buyillegaldrugshere.com or whatever, to get in trouble with the law in most civilized places you'd have to actually buy the illegal drugs, not just ping the illegal drugs IP. Especially since you can pretty easily prove to a judge that your system fetches ad links automatically and without further engagement.

Not saying it can't happen, just that it's really unlikely you would be served an ad for something so illegal just clicking on it is a liability. The literally only case I can think of coming close is CSAM, but even then, if you're regularly browsing websites that advertise CSAM, maybe find other websites to occupy your time? And I can just about guarantee any website serving CSAM ads is already doing illegal shit, so you should probably be more worried about that than an ad-click...

[-] dantheclamman@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

I'm not sure how many ads on different sites are sketchy. I don't feel like finding out, that's why I block it. There have been plenty of reasons that all sorts of illegal stuff gets inserted on well-meaning sites, so it seems like it's inviting all sorts of trouble to automatically click stuff without consideration.

[-] renzev@lemmy.world 129 points 1 week ago

You know this is the good shit because when it first came out a few years back google was running a huge disinformation campaign against it. You'd search for "adnauseum" in google and the first result would be an article from some weird advertising company calling is "insecure" and "malware" without any actual argumentation behind those claims, while no other search engine returned that article (I lost the screenshots, so yall are just gonna have to take my word for it). They also delisted it from the chrome store for not discernible reason. They were afraid.

But nowadays I'm willing to bet that they figured out how to detect adnauseum's fake clicks and filtering it out. Stuff like that needs a talented development team to keep it up to date.

[-] lemmeBe@sh.itjust.works 48 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Has the same limitations as uBlock Origin with Manifest v3 and won't work in Chrome.

[-] roofuskit@lemmy.world 154 points 1 week ago

If you're still using chrome at this point that's on you.

[-] CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee 3 points 6 days ago

I was actually curious about this as we're forced to use Edge or.Chrome at work.

[-] lemmeBe@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 week ago

I use Librewolf. The comment was meant as info for those who think that having uBlock as a base still holds significance in light of Manifest v3.

[-] roofuskit@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I meant the general "you." "People" would have worked.

[-] ripcord@lemmy.world 15 points 1 week ago

Or a Chrome derivative

[-] OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca 36 points 1 week ago

The solution is simple. Chrome ditches manifest v2? Ditch Chrome.

[-] NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 96 points 1 week ago

I always liked using this on the premise of privacy-through-obfuscation. If the powers that be must get information from me, then i'd prefer to give them garbage information.

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[-] rimu@piefed.social 91 points 1 week ago

Google has put a lot of effort into detecting and blocking stuff like this. They call it "click fraud", if you want to look it up.

It'll just mean they start ignoring clicks from you.

[-] diffusive@lemmy.world 75 points 1 week ago

That, I guess, itโ€™s the whole point. Stopping being tracked ๐Ÿ™‚

[-] cageythree@lemmy.ml 22 points 1 week ago

This feels like reverse psychology on a little kid.

"That's it, I'm not tracking you anymore! >:("
"Oooh nooo, what have I done! Oh how much I would wish to be tracked :("
"No, you won't convince me to change my mind >:("
"Oh well, guess I'll have to live without being tracked, what a shame that is."

[-] reksas@sopuli.xyz 33 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

if enough people start doing it might be effective

[-] bamboo 11 points 1 week ago

Not sure how true it was, but there was a YouTuber claiming that their videos were getting entirely demonetized because too many of their viewers had Ad blockers enabled. So even though 75% of people were seeing ads on the video, Google was keeping that ad revenue, withholding it all from the creator because 25% weren't getting ads. The claim the youtuber made is that this will probably predominantly impact creators with a more tech savvy / privacy aware audience, resulting in less of that niche content.

Anyway, this is anecdotal, but I wouldn't put it past Google to pass the issue to the creators for the actions of their consumers, even though it's not their fault.

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[-] ITGuyLevi@programming.dev 21 points 1 week ago

Throw in a dash of track-me-not (https://www.trackmenot.io/) and maybe they'll start ignoring your search queries too! Worst case my actual searches are so buried in the bs deciding what to market would be easier from my screen-name.

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[-] x00z@lemmy.world 47 points 1 week ago

This would still make a connection to the ad servers that can then track me though.

I guess with a hardened browser and a VPN it would be alright.

[-] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 5 points 6 days ago

At this point I think it's better to poison the well.

[-] morphballganon@mtgzone.com 38 points 1 week ago

Good start. Now make a version that clicks each ad a random number of times from randomly generated IP addresses.

[-] Tja@programming.dev 58 points 1 week ago

That's not how IP addresses work.

[-] Landless2029@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago

It does if it reports the URL to click home somewhere and users can opt in to pull the list to auto click.

It would DDoS the ad servers. Muwhahahaa

[-] FiskFisk33@startrek.website 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Totally doable if this was a distributed service.

ok not randomly generated, but you know

[-] yarr@feddit.nl 22 points 1 week ago

What if we use a Visual Basic UI to hack the IP address by netmask?

[-] GenosseFlosse@feddit.org 9 points 1 week ago

Yes, but this only works if you connect your VPN via 3 block chain proxies.

[-] umbrella@lemmy.ml 15 points 1 week ago

maybe we can setup a botnet to poison advertiser data.

click all the ads, all over the planet!

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[-] Evil_incarnate@lemm.ee 10 points 1 week ago

Have it form connections to all the other browsers using the extension and they all send a click.

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[-] pebbles@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

You can fake your IP. There isnt really any authentication at the IP level. Just make a packet and overwite the IP field.

Edit: I was corrected. The TCP handshake requires you to have a valid IP you can respond from. So even though you can fake your IP, you can't use that to talk to most websites.

[-] Tja@programming.dev 17 points 1 week ago

You need a TCP handshake prior to sending any http payload.

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[-] GenosseFlosse@feddit.org 16 points 1 week ago

Ad Networks use browser fingerprinting to detect duplicate clicks, which is tied to your hardware, system locale, installed fonts etc.

[-] morphballganon@mtgzone.com 19 points 1 week ago

Sounds like a solvable problem

[-] lemmylommy@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago

Some ads have used browser exploits to infect visitors in the past. So this is a very, very bad idea, if it actually is implemented in a way that is hard to filter for ad networks.

[-] DarkSurferZA@lemmy.world 37 points 1 week ago

So the way I understand this to work, it's 100% safe from the type of attack you're describing.

You are clicking the link (asking the advertiser for the data) but then never actually fetching it.

So you can never get the malicious payload to be infected.

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[-] Geodad@lemm.ee 16 points 1 week ago

This would just give money to the advertisers.

[-] LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee 16 points 1 week ago

Interesting, was wondering about this. This would also "help" the websites with more ad income right?

[-] giacomo@lemm.ee 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

if thats true, brb setting up a website and a bot farm

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this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
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