Posts by Doctor Syntax

Ad-blocker blocking websites face legal peril at hands of privacy bods

Back to basics

Let me return you to what it's all about. The advertisers, 1 in my previous post, want to entice members of the public, 4 to buy their products. The advertising industry, 2, are offering their services to do that.

Imagine, for the moment that I have a product I want to sell - garden furniture, ice cream, readymix concrete, whatever. Would FF22 or any other apologist for the advertising industry please explain how you'd sell me your services; you're offering a medium which has proved so unpopular to the public that you're reduced to pleading or haranguing them to stop blocking it. Now take it from there and explain how you're going to use this unpopular medium to improve my sales.

Re: One way online advertising might change?

"You're treating all publishers and all ads the same, as if they'd be all reckless, bad and dangerous. Which they aren't."

To paraphrase Gresham's law, the bad ads drive out the good.

'Of course they would be "new". They would be extra cost on top of the costs that are already there and have to be covered. That's what I'm saying.'

Really? These ads that are being thrust at users - you're telling me that they don't come from servers? They just come out of the ether?

Of course they come from servers. It's a question of whose servers. Instead of paying the ad networks to run the servers the advertisers pay the publishers. When all's said and done they may even be in the same server farm, even the same servers re-purposed.

"But we can also take the problem of malvertising. This is caused by malicious entities hacking the ad servers or submitting covertly malicious ads to the ad network."

And your contention is that we should allow such servers and networks access to our computers? ROFLMAO

Re: Lots of people hate adverts...

"How are individuals trying to get small web-based businesses started supposed to promote their products?

It's all very well to say that advertising isn't nice, but just blocking it is cutting off your nose to spite your face."

Do you really think products are going to be successfully promoted by advertising that isn't nice?

Re: Ok, just RTFC

"And, unlike you, I can also provide you with a verifiable and official document proving what I'm saying, and disproving what you keep repeating. Feel free to read it: http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-protection/article-29/documentation/opinion-recommendation/files/2014/wp224_en.pdf"

Thanks for the link. I've just read it. It appears to support Mr Hanff.

" they will now have to have ad sales people (or more of them than they did previously) that directly sell to advertisers. They will also have to invest into additional equipment (ad servers, which was done previously by a 3rd party), sysadmins who run those new servers, etc. These will all drive up their operating cost, which in turn will force them to display more and more obtrusive ads to cover those raised expenses."

All these costs. Would they be new as opposed to existing at present? Of course not. There are ad sales people currently selling advertising space to advertisers. There is currently server capacity delivering the ads (make the ads less obnoxious and there'd be less capacity needed). The cost is there. Maybe not identical but it's there. Who pays? Not the advertising industry. The advertisers pay. They'd still pay but the costs would be distributed differently.

But there's one thing you haven't addressed in any reply. That's what the presence of ad-blocking is telling you: users are repelled by the ads.

There's no getting around that. The more ads intrude the more they're disliked. And it's not the advertising networks and agencies that receive the opprobrium; they're faceless. It's the advertisers' names that are on the ads. They get the dislike. And once they finally wake up to that and start to walk away the industry has had it. It's not the ad-blockers that are the disease. It's the ads themselves and the reputation they've gained. The blockers are just the immunological reaction.

I've said elsewhere, the best service you can do for your industry is to report back the reaction and tell them that they need to get to work to make themselves publicly acceptable although I suppose there may be a tendency to shoot the messenger in which case you have my sympathy.

Re: @FF22 no one pays attention to them??

"you take notice of a good advert, and that helps the product tuck itself away into a little nook or cranny in your mind."

A long time ago i took note of a series of good ads. Brits of a certain age will remember the Hamlet ads - witty and even a fragment of JS Bach. As far as I was concerned it never did them a bit of good because I've never smoked.

"Ever thought the ad revenues will be greater than ANY subscription fee will ever bring in?"

In the past, maybe. The old model worked by an arrogant industry doing exactly whatever pleased them, using the consumer's paid-for bandwidth to insult the consumer's intelligence with inanities and offend their senses with offensively attention-grabbing gimmicks. To that has now been added the delivery of malware.

In the past the consumers had to put up with it because there was no defence; now there is so that old model is no longer viable. Those revenues are no longer going to be available. The publishers are going to have to rethink their business model.

Let's remember there are four groups involved here:

1. The actual advertisers - those who have products or services to sell.

2. The advertising industry.

3. The web-site publishers.

4. The public.

1 wants to favourably influence 4. 4 wants to use the product of 3. 3 wants to be paid. Currently 2 sells its services to 1 and pays 3 to impose its product on 4.

The rise of ad-blockers quite unequivocally tells us one thing: 4 doesn't like 2's product. It shouldn't take too much reasoning to conclude that this dislike will wash over onto 1. When 1 actually cotton onto that fact it really is game over for 2. In fact 2 really ought to be keeping quiet about the whole thing and the only reason I can come up with as to why they aren't is that they're so full of themselves that they really think they can overcome ad-blockers.

So far the only solutions 2 have are to persuade 3 to block 4 (which ends up having 4's dislike spill over onto 3) and to have folk like FF22 stand on the sidelines yelling at 4 to the effect that 4 really do like the advertising or some such nonsense. That isn't going to work if only because malvertising is making ad-blocking a required part of users' security alongside anti-virus. There are a few possible outcomes:

2 get their house in order. They reign back on the offensive adverts and they get a firm hold on malvertising. They then persuade 4 that it's OK to stop blocking on the basis that they really have cleaned up. The longer they keep up with their present ideas the more difficult that becomes.

3 adopt a different business model, either by subscription or by hosting vetted ads themselves. This to a greater or lesser extent cuts out 2, especially the "creative" element of 2 that's responsible for creating the obnoxiousness.

3 go out of business taking 2 with them.

1 get the message and walk away from the whole mess taking out 2 & 3.

What's the best option for 2?

Re: @FF22

"I don't think you understand how your own industry works."

Of course he does. That's why he's here - because of the panic.

Re: @FF22

"The reason ads are more obnoxious is because, as you note, it's the only way to get their attention."

The only reason the advertisers want attention is to positively influence the viewer. Obnoxious may get attention but it isn't going to be positive.

Re: @FF22

"So, by blocking ads you're creating that downward spiral for every site that provides services free of charge to you."

No. There are a couple of alternatives.

One is that they serve the ads from their own servers. They'd have to vet them for malvertising. They'd have to consider whether they'd be sufficiently annoying to drive traffic away.

The other is to offer paid for content.

As far as I can see we have a situation where internet users are thoroughly pissed off with ads. Advertisers are getting ripped off because they're paying to piss off potential customers but they don't get any feedback about the extent of negative reactions.

The advertising industry and publishers have, up to now, been coining it because there's been no way to the public to avoid what they don't like. Now there is.

The model which has victimised the public and ripped off the advertisers is failing.

It's not surprising that they (advertising industry and publishers) are trying to force the issue; they're so full of themselves that they haven't realised the game's up

The biggest service FF22 could do for their masters is to report back the reality out here - that their modus operandi is really, really hated by those who they are trying to influence and that that is counter-productive to what they're trying to achieve for the advertisers*. That the good days are over and they aren't coming back. Only when that sinks in will they finally get round to doing what they need to do - come up with a model that is acceptable to the public.

*If anything. The cynic in me says that maybe they're not trying to achieve anything except get paid and the one product that the advertising industry successfully advertises is itself to the clients.

"Don't feed the troll."

But he's so entertaining when he loses it.

Re: snooping my machine

'What I said - and what you didn't get - was that by not visiting sites with "bad" ads, but switching to sites with "good" ad instead, you're creating a feedback loop, which doesn't need you to actually fill out a form about ads.'

Nice one. The only way to distinguish these sites would be to turn off the ad-blockers!

What a pity we can all see through it.

Re: snooping my machine

'"But at the end of the chain the only way we have of expressing a preference for good quality advertising versus random malware is to install ad blockers. "

Wrong. Actually, the contrary is true: ad blocking is what eliminates any expression of preference'

Please enlighten us. If he's wrong to say it's the only way then there must be another. What is it?

Re: snooping my machine

"ANY ADVERT TARGETTED AT ME IS NOT GOING TO GET A SALE."

I can only upvote you once. Please accept my apologies.

Re: Already apply

"Have you ever paid Forbes for their content?"

I don't use that site so I don't know whether they have a paid for option. Do they? Because if they don't your question is irrelevant - if they don't accept payment he can't make one.

" Any program that leaves traces of itself behind after the Windows Uninstaller has done its work has not been following the rules for a Windows application."

?

How did Windows Uninstaller get in here?

Re: Grey Areas

"If a government makes it technically illegal to take non-harmful actions in order to refuse service to someone who will not pay for that service"

There's nothing to stop any server paywalling their site. That's not the point here.

And the user viewing ads is not paying. Someone else is paying, the advertiser of whatever product or service is being advertised; and oddly enough they're quite likely paying good money to piss off the visitor who will then be making a mental note never to spend their own good money on that product or service.

Re: Bull

"So, they will do anything to hinder such a shift in the paradigms how internet advertising works."

And as ad-blockers render their current paradigms unworkable they'll change PDQ.

Re: Bull

"Anti blockers work by checking whether the user has seen some ad or received some file, effectively retrieving the information stored in the user's cache about whether that file has been downloaded or not."

Wrong. The cache isn't involved. Neither is any information stored. Actually, if anything, the opposite is true. Ad blocking is detected by some "information" (element of the page) not being present on the client side, because of, you know, it getting blocked.

AFAICS these are two statements of the same thing.

However ultimately neither my view, nor yours, nor Mr Hanff's will be decisive. The decisive view may well be that of a court. Do you intend to provide expert evidence?

Re: Publishers could simply

"Dude, I was so with you until that last paragraph."

To what were you objecting - that he was a publisher or that he had a safe ads policy? Should he have had an unsafe ads policy?

Re: Publishers could simply

If the ads are hosted by the site the ad-blocker would be a no-op unless it blocked the entire site so the first part of your comment would be irrelevant. It would also enable the site would have to take responsibility for what it showed so there would be an incentive to filter out attempts at malvertising and a disincentive to repel viewers with ads that offensively attempt to stick their fingers into visitors' eyes and ears.

@Adam 1. Could you explain your second point a little more clearly.

However, I think you've missed something from the article. It would require the site to ask every visitor to ask permission for their browser to be probed. In the interim either the ad-blocking visitor gets to read the page or, if the page is obscured my any means nobody, ad-blocking or not, probe-consenting or nor, gets to read the contents. This means that the site manages to piss off everyone, including those of whom the site might approve.

It also has an interesting side effect. It would present the page authors the problem of explaining why it wishes to probe the user's browser. If they don't give a clear explanation then it will look a little sinister to naive users and if they do it alerts such users to the existence of these things called ad-blockers which they might then investigate and find to be a good idea.

FBI spies on how many?

Why is this article tucked away as part of the rapidly disappearing news bytes? Come to that, why is anything? If it's not fit for the main page just ignore it.

The web is DOOM'd: Average page now as big as id's DOS classic

Re: Mobile

"Of course it's quicker, you have 'm' instead of 'www' so it weighs a lot less and with the same amount of electrons to push it through the tubes, it can go that much faster.."

Obligatory Dilbert http://dilbert.com/strip/1996-08-20

Re: The Good Old Days

"If only I could configure it to be like a desktop Linux PC"

Ubuntu phone?

Ten years in the clink, file-sharing monsters! (If UK govt gets its way)

Meanwhile

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-36115657

I wonder what the baroness would think of these sentences. Does the offence count as industrial scale?

Romania suffers Eurovision premature ejection

About the headline

I see what you did there but no ejection from the Eurovison Song Contest could be called premature. Long overdue would be the best description.

"The effect of the decision has been most keenly felt by Ovidiu Anton, who was poised to perform Moment of Silence in Stockholm on 12 May. "

A nicely prescient song title.

How IT are you? Find out now in our HILARIOUS quiz!

"as if looking for butchers’ hooks"

Slight hangover from the Cockney quiz?

Edward Snowden sues Norway to prevent extradition

"Since when does the USA play by the rules or give a shit about another countries laws if its own interest are at stake?"

Norway is a NATO member in the front line facing Russia. Pakistan isn't. There's a difference.

Re: The marathon-couch-surfing champion in the Ecuadorian embassy

If he leaves the embassy he faces the humiliation of not being extradited to the US. He also faces some jail time in the UK but that would probably be minor considering the length of time he's already imprisoned himself.

Microsoft headhunters seek Linux folk for secret open source unit

"Could you strip out the contentious Google stuff and replace it with Microsoft stuff?"

Maybe they're already working on it: Cyanogen.

Nevertheless a slight FTFY is needed. "Replace it with contentious Microsoft stuff"

'Impossible' EmDrive flying saucer thruster may herald new theory of inertia

Re: IMHO

"The western world will likely tie itself up ..., doing nothing with it, long past the point Germany, China and possibly others are using it in space craft."

So you don't include Germany as part of the western world?

FBI boss: We paid at least $1.2m to crack the San Bernardino iPhone

'"It was in my view worth it," he added. Of course, nothing useful was found on the iThing.'

And we're not even told what was found that wasn't useful. So what evidence do we have, other than Comey's own statement, that the phone was broken at all?

From his point of view, of course, it was worth it as a face-saving way to climb down from a position he thought he could win and then found he couldn't.

Kent Police handed domestic abuse victim's data to alleged abuser – a Kent cop

Re: Disgraceful penalty

"the ICO blatantly trying to save Police face"

How do you make that out?

The ICO has said there was a serious breach. It's imposed a fine. It's done what it's enabled to do by law.

We complain when public bodies act beyond the law. That can't be squared with complaining when they don't.

Re: Stinks of corruption

"Exactly, the person that 'lifted' (actually stole) the additional data from the phone should be charged with theft"

How many times do we have to go over this? It's just like the unending "copyright violation is theft" crap.

Theft is taking with intent to permanently deprive the owner. Copying isn't theft, it's copying. The two are not the same thing.

"It's one of the ICO's few tools in these circumstances"

It really ought to have been considered at the time the DPA was drawn up. Fines are inappropriate for a public body. There seems to be an assumption that public bodies wouldn't breach the provisions. We now realise that they're one of the categories of data managers who present most problems. In the absence of any other more appropriate provision there needs to be a mandatory requirement for personal responsibility.

But I still can't get my head round the notion that this was supposed to have been carried out in accordance with the force's procedures. Are the procedures really so stupid as to mandate this or are they so vague that anything would be in accordance?

"The force has not responded to questions from The Register as to whether it anticipated allegations of corruption as a result of a victim's private data being passed to a suspect employed by it."

Did you ask whether disciplinary action had been taken? It's one thing to have procedures, it's another to follow those procedures without engaging brain. There should have been a "this doesn't seem right" moment.

12,000 chopped: Intel finds its inner paranoid

Always on

If something is always on I expect it to use a much more frugal CPU then x86 and its descendants. Maybe this is part of the problem.

Re: Citation needed

"I was specifically interested to know what was transformed in the auto industry"

Replace simple contact breaker & carburettor by ECU?

How innocent people 'of no security interest' are mere keystrokes away in UK's spy databases

"Have you tried removing data, such as records of dead people from a CRM system?"

Removing data should be a design requirement. If it was and the implementation was competent then removal shouldn't be difficult.

In this case we're dealing with public servants who in positions of trust. That means they should be able to show that they deserve our trust. If it's difficult or impossible to remove the data of innocent people then we can reasonably infer that they didn't include that in the design, that they didn't intend such data should be removed and that maybe we can't trust them.

Re: FOI

A subject request under the DPA would be the appropriate route. You might need an FOI request to find out where to send the DPA request.

Re: Very Sloppy Headline Writing

"Sadly some may break the rules, that is what supervision, management, the police and other agencies are supposed to be there to control"

True. And those who break the rules, at least those rules which are part of legislation, can be prosecuted. But are those who break this set of rules prosecuted? If not why not? People have been asking "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" for a very long time and with very good reason.

Intel told Irish council all was well just before 12k job cuts announced

Re: Why does this always come as a surprise to politicians?

'Listed companies are obliged by law to release "price sensitive" information to the markets in a controlled manner'

It depends when the last meeting with the council was but it seems dubious whether 'at the last meeting between Kildare County councillors and Intel, the company claimed things were picking up' is a controlled manner.

Magnitude malvertisers spew 400 attacks from abused Scot ad firm

Re: People who work in the ad industry

I'm sure that as soon as they've had their morning coffee the usual suspects will be along here to tell us that it's only the ad industry that keeps the web running - and to prove your point.

"When the advertising industry gets its own house in order"

When? Don't you mean "if ever"?

Qualcomm channels Star Trek's Scotty as it faces a mobe chip wreck

When making projections, don't mistake sigmoidal growth curves for exponential.

FBI's Tor pedo torpedoes torpedoed by United States judge

Re: Stable Doors

"The FBI clearly messed up and need a telling off, but it can't be in the public interest for this many convictions to go down on a technicality."

That technicality might one day protect you against a false accusation.

Along with "if you've nothing to hide"* we keep hearing "nobody is above the law". Well, that one is right, nobody should be above the law and that includes the law enforcers.

*Which is too close to abandoning the presumption of innocence and should be treated with the contempt it deserves.