Let adware be treated as malware, Canuck boffins declare after breaking open Wajam ad injector The technology industry has numerous terms for sneaky software, including malware, adware, spyware, ransomware, and the ever adorable PUPs – potentially unwanted programs. But there isn't always a clear difference between malware and less threatening descriptors. In a research paper distributed this month through pre-print …
I find a Pi-Hole much more convenient, protects all devices on the home network.
While the device in question is on the home network.
Doesn't help when you attach that device - as frequently happens with say, laptops - to someone else's network. Whereas the aforementioned techniques - Hosts file, Adblocker ultimate and NoScript - continue to work in this case.
Best option (IMO) would be to have a virtual machine on your device with pihole in it, and always route through that to the network. That or make a portable (battery operated) version of the pihole that you can take with you on the road.
Or uMatrix.
Javascript in emails or webpages is biggest threat after a malicious/rogue/idiot user in someone's office. AV is useless really and dangerous with false positives.
Then we have various kinds of Autorun, USB HID based attacks and people "deliberately" clicking on stupid web links in search or opening stupid email attachments. AV and/or script blocking isn't a substitute for user training,
TBH i wouldn't worry so much about static adds like they have in newspapers. Where it's the responsibility of the ad server to tell the add supplier that it had served an ad (preferably without much extra detail). I wouldn't even mind if that changed every now and then if I refreshed the page.
I can blank those ads out mentally and they shouldn't cost much bandwidth to download and would pay the website hosting them which is not per se a bad thing.
Trouble is I don't think I've seen an ad like that on the internet for years and years.
And adware like this is nothing but malware. If you can't uninstall it cleanly by design, it's malware.
The Guardian online has ads as you describe. They don't get blocked by Firefox Focus on my iPhone, nor Pihole running on the WiFi setup here. They're static ads, change every couple of days, well labelled as paid content. They're usually quite interesting little articles too - I find I click through around 50% of them. Often I'll click through the remainder to encourage this sort of ad placement.
Verbal big neon sign and all.
Advertising is just communication. What can make it bad is what is communicated, and to some extent how. If I pay The Register to display my advertisement came next to their news article - then that helps to reward journalists for their work. If the card promotes my app and the app is lousy - then that's too bad for you, but never mind. If I pay them to write a story on my behalf and offer it as unbiased news... I think they published a price list for that service, unless I'm thinking of Buzzcock.
And if I were to have your ad thrust, unwanted, into my face then I'd avoid buying whatever it was that you're flogging. You'd have been ripped off by the advertising industry. The advertising industry isn't interested in selling your stuff to me. Not in the least. All they're interested in is selling advertising to you. So anything that tries to force advertising onto people who don't want it,j just so they can sell more advertising are actually committing fraud against their clients; they're taking money for harming those clients' interests.
@ Doctor Syntax -- So, are you advocating for a fully subscription-based... well... everything? All of your news, all of your entertainment, all of your online activities...? (To say nothing of the "real world" services that are at least partially subsidized by advertising!) Are you prepared for the prices of all of those services to go up precipitously and are you committing to subscribe to those services in perpetuity to keep them coming?
Or are you just expecting people to keep you informed, entertained, and connected for "EXPOSURE!"? Do YOU work for free...?
Methinks you are confusing the point, here.
I don't think most people here are against adverts 'per se'. The problem is the way they're being delivered, the unwanted tracking of everything and the potencial (and proven) delivery of 'malware' or whatever you want to call It.
You wanna show me ads? OK. Do It respecting me and I won't blackhole you.
If not by advertisements, how do you know where to buy stuff? There are few retailers that don't advertise. Sadie's Sandwiches may merely depend on you happening to walk by, but there probably is still a menu card of sandwich options available to you. I suppose that Sadie's Sex Toys probably doesn't have a window display...
There's two main reasons why I have not owned a TV for many years.
1) Shampoo adverts. Make up some pseudo scientific chemical names and talk B.S. while vacuous models shake their heads.
2) Car adverts. You never see a traffic jam, this car can go really fast and (wipe out your family) it's really really good.
What with Pi-Hole and add-ons I am no longer shouting at the screen. Whoohoo!
You forgot the breakfast commercials, with a table with enough food to feed a third-world country for weeks, a smiling, radiant housewife who had time to apply make-up before cooking breakfast, two well-behaved kids already dressed and ready to leave, hubby in a suit getting ready for work.
Now get off our lawn.
It all started with 'push' technology back in the 90s. Some smartass marketing people thought it would be a Really Good Thing to all websites to load applications content onto users's computers because it was the obvious way to monetize web sites. Since the PC software vendors were ever compliant in this users have had a generation of whack-a-mole with vulnerabilities because as has been pointed out "one person's adware is another's malware".
What's particularly frustrating about all this crapware is just how badly it works. Quite apart from clagging up my computer(s) it rewards me by serving up all sorts of irrelevant advertisements (often in Spanish but I've had ads from Ukranian car dealers). Its become a bit of a game, "Confuse their AI", searching for all sorts of weird and wonderful things just to see what it can offer me. I actually don't mind relevant ads and I'd even give people hints about what I'm looking for but obviously there's a reason why "Javascript is the most popular programming language" (to me their efforts are bit like watching someone struggle with an AI or real-time problem using an early version of BASIC -- you really can do anything in any language, just don't expect it to work very well!).
> It (Canada's data protection regulator) made a series of recommendations to remediate violations, only to have the company sell its assets to Hong Kong-based Iron Mountain Technology Limited.
No wonder we have this trouble. The directors of that company knew full well what they were doing, and that they were breaking the law. What other type of fraud, when detected, is just met with a polite request to stop? When are such directors going to start getting substantial gaol sentences, like lone teenage crackers do?
Make anything other than a static image with same address for everyone and a plain link on it illegal.
Also Google, Facebook et al are fake snake oil salesmen in their (immoral) marketing of advert space claiming to leverage "profiles", it's mostly ineffective and entirely parasitical and dishonest.
Most don't understand how stealing bandwidth and affecting availability is harmful to information systems, and of course, to a company's bottom line.
Most law makers are just now beginning to understand the value of information being stolen from everyone. Unfortunately, once they do figure it out, those in government use it to their advantage--so I wouldn't expect any laws to shut information collection down any time soon.
Information collection makes the financial industry more powerful, just like a Vegas casino getting their hands on a secret football injury sheet.
Soon we InfoSec professionals will have to make a decision. Whether to support the collection of personal/private data or to stand against it.
Any time a large corporation with deep pockets can explain to law makers and government officials, how beneficial their technology is to their own power, the harder it is to call something malicious or damaging to the public. Just look at Huawei as an example. Countries whose population values freedom and liberty are standing against them. Those who only pretend to value these principles--to place profit above principles, are turning a blind eye.
Doing great till 2nd half of last paragraph. Where is proof? ZTE is Chinese Gov backed, not Huawei. Security agencies of UK, USA and Western Commercial data collection such as; Google, Facebook, Uber, Amazon, MS, Apple, Pinterest etc are the threat to ordinary citizens' privacy and democracy.
CIA use of Cisco has been proven.
ANY Chinese company is subject to the intervention of the Chinese government; it's part of the overall subject of sovereign rule. And Chinese law makes it pretty clear that they can intervene in any matters within its borders at any time. They, essentially, ARE the law. IOW, Huawai is considered suspect because it's a Chinese company acting on Western interests, which means, by Chinese law, the Chinese government can intervene in Western interests through Huawei, and there's little Huawei can say in the matter, business suicide or no.
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