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AdNauseam is a uBlock fork that goes further: it actively attacks marketers by auto-clicking every ad before blocking (adnauseam.io)

submitted 3 months ago by joshchandra@midwest.social to c/technology@lemmy.world

169 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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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[–] archonet@lemy.lol 169 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (42 children)

not in this way
not enough to matter

the way it works is sending an HTTP request that registers as a "click" to the advertiser (thus costing them money), but then doesn't actually let the browser download any content and fetch the webpage, basically pi-holes the destination site and any attached tracking cookies. Combined with the fact that it does this to every ad, it would basically poison any click tracking.

edit: pedants

and before I get any more of you, this is just what I remember reading about adnauseam, do not take it as gospel, go look at AdNauseam's FAQ.

[+] victorz@lemmy.world -41 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (40 children)

none

Ah great

it works [by] sending an HTTP request that registers as a "click" to the advertiser

Uh, wait a minute. 🤔

Sending a request also uses bandwidth, you know.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 20 points 3 months ago (14 children)

That HTTP request would also show up in the advertisers web logs with your origin IP address.

[–] FarceOfWill@infosec.pub 21 points 3 months ago (1 children)

What are they going to do? blacklist me and stop serving me ads?

Oh no

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

If you care about your information and privacy, why are you giving them your information for nothing?

[–] Colloidal@programming.dev 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

You do have a point, but... It's not for nothing. It's to hurt the predatory ad industry. And what you give up isn't much: your IP address and likely the referral (so they know you visited website X that was serving their ad). It's up to you to decide whether that's an acceptable privacy cost to conduct this kind of guerilla ad warfare.

It would be cool if it could somehow integrate to a VPN and only do that while the VPN is active. I don't think it's possible, though.

edit: Just found out from their FAQ:

Does AdNauseam respect the browser's private-browsing/incognito modes?
Yes, AdNauseam does not collect or click Ads that occur on pages loaded in private-browsing or incognito windows, unless manually enabled by the user.

[–] partial_accumen@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

It would be cool if it could somehow integrate to a VPN and only do that while the VPN is active. I don’t think it’s possible, though

Potentially possible, but I agree, likely not worth the effort.

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