> Today, for instance, we see that a majority of people who install an ad blocker don't actually do it to block ads (that's just an added bonus). They are actually doing it to block tracking.
Is there any evidence for this at all?
Is there any evidence for this at all?
Telling a person "if you install this they'll stop tracking you in some abstract way" is way less effective than "install this and you wont have to wait to watch youtube videos."
There's dozens of us! Dozens!
But more seriously, there's actually lots of us. You don't hear about us because we don't narcissistically post about it on facebook. We just block shitty software and move on with our lives.
I have no stats for you though, because stats are usually collected through third party trackers, and I block them all, so I'm never represented on anyones metrics. Based on some rough stats like these[1] and my own experience, I'd guess something like 1-3% of the population in western countries.
[1] https://www.quantable.com/analytics/how-many-users-block-goo...
ad blockers: ublock origin
ad and tracking blockers: umatrix privacy badger
tracking blockers: cookie autodelete decentraleyes
other: httpseverywhere
I'm mostly blocking trackers.
Exactly the reason I installed an ad blocker. If YouTube had released their Red subscription in the UK I might never have installed the blocker (actually probably would have eventually, but later than I did)
uBlock origin is 2nd and rising in popularity and it blocks trackers by default.
Both they (and others) depend upon the EasyList collection of urls/regexes, etc. to block out sites and includes
An example of this mindset: http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-to-speed-up-browsing-by-usi...
In fact, I want to white list certain websites (a dozen or so) to continue seeing ads, but I don’t want to because I know that they are likely using Google for their ads and I don’t want Google’s little grabbling hands tracking me.
For users I deal with, I do it as a preventive measure - I worry about phishing/spearphishing and other email vectored attacks, compromised websites, and the risk of a compromised ad network where even if something malicious is killed in minutes it could still reach tens of thousands of people.
And I still get AV alerts at least a couple times a month where the AV has blocked access to something that's recognizably part of a remote access scam.