• slazer2au@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Adnausem

    It is built on top of unlock origin and will silently click on the ads in the background to mess with your digital footprint while costing advertisers money who use pay per click.

    • hemko@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 months ago

      That sounds neat, but it means those ads are at least partially loaded on the background, which is also bad

      • slazer2au@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        only the URL is loaded.

        https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnauseam-click-ads

        How does AdNauseam “click Ads”?
        AdNauseam ‘clicks’ Ads by issuing an HTTP request to the URL to which they lead. In current versions the is done via an XMLHttpRequest (or AJAX request) issued in a background process. This lightweight request signals a ‘click’ on the server responsible for the Ad, but does so without opening any additional windows or pages on your computer. Further it allows AdNauseam to safely receive and discard the resulting response data, rather than executing it in the browser, thus preventing a range of potential security problems (ransomware, rogue Javascript or Flash code, XSS-attacks, etc.) caused by malfunctioning or malicious Ads. Although it is completely safe, AdNauseam’s clicking behaviour can be de-activated in the settings panel.

    • BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one
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      2 months ago

      That feature it uses to silently click ads increased the RAM usage of my browser by a lot on two separate systems (my android phone, and my PC) and since I really do not give an extra fuck about clicking ads in the background (Google still makes millions, and the plugin dev is also using the clicks to make money via affiliate) and I only care about blocking them, I went back to uBlock Origin.

      • Mossy Feathers (They/Them)@pawb.social
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        2 months ago

        and the plugin dev is also using the clicks to make money via affiliate

        That’s actually kinda brilliant and I’m jealous. I might actually install it just to reward his intelligence. I can’t blame him for doing it, I’d do it too if I was in his shoes; I wish I’d thought of it first.

      • Bizarroland@kbin.social
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        2 months ago

        There are tools that allow people who buy ads to compare the performance of their ads with their own metrics.

        The more ineffectual an ad platform is, the less likely ad purchasers are to purchase ads.

        If 20% of American internet users used ad nauseam it would cause significant financial damage to ad companies across the globe.