Using an ad-blocker
Ad-blockers help us defend against the threats posed upon us by online advertisements (shortened to: ads).
Online ads are booby-traps. It's like candy strapped to a mine.
- First the ads are selected on what the advertiser(s) know about you to be as attractive as possible. This by itself is already a process that infringes your privacy.
- The displaying of the ads allow advertisers to send a constant stream of information about what you do on that web page to their servers.
- Much research is available that shows that assumed anonymous information can quite easily be de-anonymized by combining data from different sources.
- When you click an advertisement every piece off data you enter becomes part of that same database.
- The collected data is added to the profile that they use to provide with more cunning ads.
- The collected data is sold to other parties and demanded by governments.
- The ads are often abused to install malware.
Malware is software with malicious intentions, software used to break into your device, steal your data or get access to services you use (like your bank account).
And an other annoying side effect of all this, is that it eats up performance and bandwidth of our device(s). My smart phone only uses half the bandwidth with an ad blocker installed (making me pay less per month).
Installing an ad-blocker shouldn't be that hard. Both Firefox and Chrome have Ad Block extensions. On Android smart phones its and Ad Blocker on system level that needs a little more configuration (every WiFi you connect to needs some settings). It all doable. Just remember any blocker is an improvement against no blocking at all. If you want more, you can get more by comparing different blockers and methods.
When you have successfully installed and configured an ad blocker many web sites will start complaining about you not allowing them to make money by displaying advertisements. Every such complaint, via banners and pop-ups is a victory.
uBlock Origin is in 2017 the best performing browser extension for Firefox and Chrome (Chromium).