The FBI advises users to install ad blockers

[Daniel Sims]

PSA: Ad blocking is perhaps one of the most controversial aspects of browsing the web today. Users agree that it declutters web pages, but they also deny ad revenue to many sites that need it (like TechSpot). However, law enforcement agencies admit that ad blocking also mitigates some security risks that online advertising introduces.

The FBI issued a public notice this week advising consumers to watch out for scammers impersonating advertisements. The Bureau's solutions included using an ad blocker so the fraudulent ads (along with real ones) don't appear.

Users who search for companies on Google these days usually see the word "ad" next to the first couple of search results from companies that buy ads on the service. The FBI warns that some malicious actors are buying ads while impersonating real companies in elaborate schemes to scam customers and deliver malware.

Hackers might buy ads leading to sites that impersonate real businesses or brands, or use good search engine optimization to ensure their fraudulent sites appear high up in search results. From there, attackers employ common tricks like impersonating financial services to steal users' information or popular software to trick users into downloading malware.

Users should only look for software on trusted sites. If you aren't sure whether you can find a software developer's authentic website, publications like TechSpot host verified safe downloads for a variety of programs.

Despite the controversy surrounding ad blockers, the FBI admits they are an effective solution for avoiding malicious ads. The Bureau also lists other good precautions like checking an advertisement's URL to ensure it leads to the brand's actual website or directly entering the company's URL if you know it. If you don't, Wikipedia tends to list company website URLs in its corresponding articles.

The FBI also thinks businesses can help protect customers from online fraud. Domain protection services can alert companies when similar domains appear.

Despite the increased safety ad blockers can provide, Google recently threatened to neuter them in Chrome, though they appear to be safe for now. The company planned to migrate the browser to Manifest V3 next month, which would have severely limited ad blockers' capabilities. Popular extension uBlock Origin wouldn't survive the switch without serious changes, for example. Earlier this month, Google delayed the move away from V2 and won't try to curtail ad blockers at least until March.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/97058-fbi-advises-users-install-ad-blockers.html

 

[psycros]

I really hope Google DOES cripple ad blockers so people will stop using their spyware masquerading as a browser. I wonder how the FBI even found a moment to put out this warning?

 

[Theinsanegamer]

It should be common sense, and there is a reason alt browsers like brave are including them by default. Browsing the net without an adblocker is like rawdogging, ricky and frankly not worth it unless you trust the source. Something like 90% of PC infections come directly from compromised ad servers or hijacked web links, both of which ad blockers fight directly.

I really hope Google DOES cripple ad blockers so people will stop using their spyware masquerading as a browser. I wonder how the FBI even found a moment to put out this warning?

I'd much rather they not, despriving tech bros of ad revenue, thus preventing them from enabling their censorship attempts or their social agendas is a major positive.

 

[Durch]

Search engines don't seem to have an issue with censoring anything that goes against there political agenda. Why should it be that hard to use the same tactic against these malicious actors.

 

[Kam7r]

I have 0 ad on the internet as a whole no matter where I go and since years .... it's really easy to do, take 10min of your time...

 

[wiyosaya]

There are free, ad-blocking name servers, too. I bet google would have a hard time blocking them, not that I care. I would not use chrome for anything even if someone paid me. Chrome/Edge are nothing but spyware in browser clothing, and screw google anyway for even threatening to ban ad blockers from Chrome. That is one way, IMO, to get people to stop using and/or trusting chrome and google. Chrome is a synonym for spyware.

Yet the Chrome sheep are still bleating.

 

[RudyBob]

Life is a commercial so anything I can do to avoid them I am going to do. As Hillary Clinton once said and I am not quoting........I am not responsible for under funded business ventures.

 

[BoowieBear]

If the FBI wants me to do it I will do the opposite. Swamp creatures.

 

[pgcharlie]

If websites can guarantee that the ads they allow on their website (TechSpot included) are just clean and safe, I do not mind watching them to help said sites to generate revenue, but the norm is "what you watch and allow from our site is not my responsibility."

 

[AxelAminoff]

I switched to Opera a few years ago after having issues with adblocking in Chrome. Opera has built-in adblocking and VPN out of the box plus support for Chrome extensions and is simply convenient. Sure, there are other good alternative browsers, but I am lazy and went with Opera since it ticked all the boxes for my browsing need. Once you go ad-free there is really no turning back.

 

[captaincranky]

I switched to Opera a few years ago after having issues with adblocking in Chrome. Opera has built-in adblocking and VPN out of the box plus support for Chrome extensions and is simply convenient.

OK, keep in mind this is coming from someone who uses Opera as his principle browser also. Yes, it's built in ad blocker is quite good. However, Google is the default search engine, and Chrome is its engine. You're in no way safe from tracking with it. It's "Speed Dial", even posts your recent shopping excursions.

I have a few "select" websites I visit, for "erotic art". These sites must maintain their downloadable content off site, to avoid copyright entanglement.. When you get to host sites, there's where the adware and redirects happen. They plan it that way, so you'll fork over cash to get rid or them. Well, AVG Free, has a library of blacklisted and scam websites, far surpassing that of the old "SpybotSD". It's pretty hard to get yourself into a pickle (pun intended), with it installed.

Unless you're doing nothing nothing more than exchanging texts, the built in VPN is a slug. I've tried on 100 MB plus downloads, and came up with something on the order of ,"time to download, 3 weeks".

I say these things out of respect for Opera, not implying any contempt. What it does, it does well, and is far less resource intensive than Firefox.

Google did do one helluva job with the Chrome engine, you can't take that away from them.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I use Firefox with Adblock Ultimate at home and it's so good that it even blocks YouTube commercials. Since Firefox is descended from Netscape and thus, Mosaic, it doesn't have the vulnerabilities that all Chromium-based browsers do.

When it comes to browsers these days, there's Firefox and then there's everything else because everything else is Chromium.

At work, I'm forced to use Edge but I don't give a rat's posterior about this piece of junk. I gotta hand it to Lenovo however, somehow they managed to make a tiny i5 AIO-type PC (it's a little box that attaches to the back of the monitor) that manages to be passively-cooled.

 

[captaincranky]

I use Firfox with Adblock Ultimate at home and it's so good that it even blocks YouTube commercials.

Here's the thing, Opera blocks YouTube ads right out of the box..! Verily.!
I crashed the video driver again on my "SfS" (Scan for Smut), box. I pulled the monitor cord, re-plugged it, the monitor lit up, but Opera did a semi-crash. (1/4 size window, no way to get back to full screen).

What else could I do but close that window? Opera returned this message, "are you sure you want to quit Opera with 428 tabs open"? Plus, the three other windows I had open, were still working. God bless "tab snoozing".

OK, so you couldn't get away with "running up the score" like that with shopping sites. The pages are mostly thumbnails, with no active content.

I'm finally back up and annoying people with my G-41 rig, running Mint. Linux isn't the light weight OS it was once. Plus, Mint is 64 bit only, on top of 4 GB of RAM. Well, Mint crashes periodically when it's sking too much of the machine. But they're different from Windows crashes. At least they're "new and exciting". For example I've got quite a few tabs open, and Mint decides it won't let you do anything else, not so much as opening a file. You double click a desktop icon, and get......, nuttin'. Sheesh. And the sound driver quits, until you pull the plug on the headphone and plug it back in. Sort of like the monitor on the Windows box..

 

[Avro Arrow]

Here's the thing, Opera blocks YouTube ads right out of the box..! Verily.!

Not bad, not bad!

I crashed the video driver again on my "SfS" (Scan for Smut), box.

I don't believe you. GeForce drivers never crash!

I pulled the monitor cord, re-plugged it, the monitor lit up, but Opera did a semi-crash. (1/4 size window, no way to get back to full screen).

Jesus, I honestly thought that you were kidding! That makes Adrenalin drivers look good!

What else could I do but close that window? Opera returned this message, "are you sure you want to quit Opera with 428 tabs open"? Plus, the three other windows I had open, were still working. God bless "tab snoozing".

I have Firefox set to just restore whatever tabs I already had open. God only knows how many I have open at once. I figure that if I have 32GB of RAM, I may as well use it!

As for SfS, that pretty much describes all four of my PCs at home!

Well, seven if you count craptops and eight if you count tablets.

 

[8600M GT]

The FBI is not wrong. I couldn't go back to not having ad blockers, and not just from a security concern perspective, but from an assault-on-the-senses perspective. I got a new laptop recently and forgot to install an ad blocker before surfing the web. Didn't take very long to be reminded that I'd forgotten about it. All these flashy, blinking ads, sometimes as the page background, sometimes affecting page layout. And this is on regular news or tech support sites, nothing shady.

My concern with Google's potential ad-blocker ban is not for Chrome (although somewhat for users of Chrome), but whether it will impact other browsers using the Blink engine. Hopefully it doesn't, but if it does that ought to give Firefox a nice boost in market share.

 

[8600M GT]

As for the economics of it, 20% of me is like yeah I'd like to support the sites I read more, and 80% of me is like yeah but not enough to turn off ads. I do have them off for one other tech website I read that is not obnoxious, and testing turning them off here, I can see that it's not bad either, although Vivaldi classifies the top banner as a tracker, it must load a tracker before it loads the ad. Still, the "Tech jobs" one loads as a non-tracker and is quite reasonable.

But generally, if a website says, "We detected you are using an ad blocker. Please turn it off to read this article," I leave. You have to already be in my regular circle of sites I read to get a chance to prove the ads aren't obnoxious, which is a small list. It also means I'm not really supporting the ad-based economy.

I've wondered why more sites don't have something like Flattr, or offer a premium ad-free experience for a few quid a month. Maybe the perception is the overhead isn't worth it versus just signing up for Google Ads? But if ad blockers become more popular, it will become necessary economically.

I _have_ signed up for that premium ad-free subscription on a couple of sites that offer it, but aside from sites affiliated with print magazines or newspapers, it rarely is an option.

 

[wiyosaya]

@Julio Franco I stopped blocking TS ads a while back. At the time, I saw no problems, however, now, there are a minority of ads that I am annoyed with. There are now ones where you click on a link on a TS page, and then an overlay pops up without taking you to the link, and then you have to press on "close" which does appear to actually work (I have no idea if it is doing anything in the background). However, IMO, they are annoying almost to the point where I want to re-enable my ad blocker on TS. Honestly, those ads remind me of the once very annoying porn-popup-ads.

And yes, I get I can pay for premium access, however, it seems to me that TS might get more revenue from my allowing ads to be shown. In the time that I have been allowing TS ads, I've probably clicked once on one of the links. Most of the stuff, if I see it and it draws my interest, I'll go to a search engine and search for it. Yes, I know that defeats the purpose, but given the content of this article, it sounds like the scam ad links are difficult to detect - for even behemoths like google.

I have an openSuSE linux PC I use for firewall, DNS, router, etc on my home network, and when I fix the fact that a recent upgrade to the latest version broke my DNS (which serves my home network), I plan on using ad blocking nameservers as forwarders for that DNS. Maybe then, I'll become a "premium" TS member.

Perhaps part of the problem is the behemoth google. If some service would pop-up, pun intended, that served ads also and ensured that they were legitimate, google would stop being so arrogant. Competition is a good thing, but I think that those who would consider such a service probably talk themselves out of it with phrases like "how could we compete with google?" Its a shame, IMO, google has gotten to be what it is. Maybe some government will go after them on a antitrust basis.

 

[wiyosaya]

I use Firefox with Adblock Ultimate at home and it's so good that it even blocks YouTube commercials. Since Firefox is descended from Netscape and thus, Mosaic, it doesn't have the vulnerabilities that all Chromium-based browsers do.

Firefox, FTW! I use Waterfox, a 64-bit variant of Firefox with ublock origin that also blocks embedded YouTube ads.

 

[wiyosaya]

If the FBI wants me to do it I will do the opposite. Swamp creatures.

Well, if you click, even by accident, on one of the "fake ads", we'll be here to hear of your horror stories.

 

[Julio Franco]

@Julio Franco I stopped blocking TS ads a while back. At the time, I saw no problems, however, now, there are a minority of ads that I am annoyed with. There are now ones where you click on a link on a TS page, and then an overlay pops up without taking you to the link, and then you have to press on "close" which does appear to actually work (I have no idea if it is doing anything in the background). However, IMO, they are annoying almost to the point where I want to re-enable my ad blocker on TS. Honestly, those ads remind me of the once very annoying porn-popup-ads.

And yes, I get I can pay for premium access, however, it seems to me that TS might get more revenue from my allowing ads to be shown. In the time that I have been allowing TS ads, I've probably clicked once on one of the links.

Thanks for bringing this up. We have interstitial ads enabled to guest users only on certain sections (they definitely make a difference).

Because you're logged in you should see less ads, and none of the more invasive formats like that one -- just fixed that now, I think we had it running for a week or so because of a mistake. And of course, Elite users see no ads whatsoever

 

[axiomatic13]

Use a Pi-hole and an adblocker. Don't let any of that crap on your home network.

 

[p51d007]

I use the Brave browser, along with Adguard, then whitelist the sites I want.

 

[Fastturtle]

There are free, ad-blocking name servers, too. I bet google would have a hard time blocking them, not that I care. I would not use chrome for anything even if someone paid me. Chrome/Edge are nothing but spyware in browser clothing, and screw google anyway for even threatening to ban ad blockers from Chrome. That is one way, IMO, to get people to stop using and/or trusting chrome and google. Chrome is a synonym for spyware.

Yet the Chrome sheep are still bleating.

Although Edge is spyware, it does have it's place in the world, which is why I still use it. Much faster on some websites and they're where I do tend to search for products. As to Chrome; it's a bloated, steaming PoS that wont be anywhere near my computer.

 

[wiyosaya]

Thanks for bringing this up. We have interstitial ads enabled to guest users only on certain sections (they definitely make a difference).

You're welcome! Like the doors from the ship in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy would say - Glad to be of Service!

Because you're logged in you should see less ads, and none of the more invasive formats like that one -- just fixed that now, I think we had it running for a week or so because of a mistake. And of course, Elite users see no ads whatsoever

I do sometimes browse TS without logging in. Anyway, it sounds like you discovered that something was off and were able to fix it. Thanks for doing so!

 

[trieste1s]

NextDNS with filtering does excellently, and the yearly fee is affordable.
One could also try filtering using Adguard and/or Safing Portmaster.

Ublock Origin on Firefox browser with Medium mode and whitelisting for JavaScript.
Firefox itself with Strict anti-tracking mode.