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Comment by irjustin | Hacker News Reader

I'll go against the grain and say this is not a security threat. if missing ublock is a true security concern you shouldn't be using chrome. Because the opposite is not true - that chrome+ublock is keeping you secure from tracking.

We just don't want to see ads. Isn't that enough?

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There are malicious ads and dark patterns around ad design to trick users into clicking them. I don't think it's security in the "vulnerability" sense or "privacy" sense but more in the "phishing prevention" sense.

Think of those "click here to OPTIMIZE YOUR PC" adware junk you'd prefer anyone you provide tech support for to never see

Then you also get absolute scum bags pushing that stuff via push notifications too https://www.lloydatkinson.net/posts/2022/consider-disabling-...

Those ads aren't being blocked by ublock lite?

Clients that lost uBO and I put Lite on are getting hit with malware. It may be correlation but it looks like causation.

The article is about blocking ads that contain malware (which are surprisingly common). Preventing tracking is a whole different ballgame that isn't covered by the article

Exactly!

Google has shown itself to be perfectly happy taking money from criminals and their ad network does push malware. To that end their ad business is a security threat.

Not a big deal on the desktop and a small deal on the laptop, ad blocking gives a noticeable performance gain on Android.

Years ago when I had one of those Intel Atom netbooks you could tell a pretty big difference since it was pretty RAM constrained.

This is unpopular every time I say it, but by in large people just shouldn't be browsing the web on mobile. Every single aspect of the experience is worse, and is likely to continue to get worse over time:

- tiny phone screen

- objectively worse mobile-site

- far worse touch-screen-based UI

- the entire iOS side of things has far fewer choices for any sort of effective ad blocking

Is it possible for a savvy technologist to overcome these problems? Yes, but it's like disabling junk in Windows: you're playing a game of cat and mouse and slowly losing the battle over time.

Disagree. Most of my web browsing is done on mobile (iPhone).

iOS has many different ad blockers, including system wide ones that are VPN based. I use a good one that even blocks Youtube ads.

> This is unpopular every time I say it

Speaking for me, but this might be because while your points are valid:

> Every single aspect of the experience is worse

this is wrong (I can tell you that when my SO falls asleep hugging me in the bed, the mobile is a far better experience than a laptop to browse the web for instance - the tiny screen is a feature in this case), and it seems you are missing the elephants in the room that explain why people are using mobile despite those issues, and you are not addressing the use cases.

This makes your comment read like you are disconnected from reality. You might not be wrong, and it might just be a matter of changing the perspective a bit. In the new perspective, you would show that you understand why people actually browse the web on mobile and address the issues from there.

"You should not browse the web from a mobile" doesn't help at all. Most people do it, and although it's imperfect, people seem to go on on their lives anyway.

You probably need to motivate your view a bit more (so we can go from "is it indeed the case that we should stop browsing the web from a mobile?" to "this person is right, we should definitely stop doing this, what now?"), and address the specific use cases where people use the mobile and provide alternatives.

Alternatives like "just don't browse at the bus stop, allow your mind to be bored / to relax a bit" are perfectly valid. One can disagree with the proposal, but that's one solution.

I always "upgrade" to laptop or dual monitor desktop for those reasons but it's impractical to carry a larger device around all the time. There should be some middle ground where mobile is still usable without being incredibly slow even if it's still not an optimal experience.

> people just shouldn't be browsing the web on mobile

While you might be right, it's a pointless advice given most internet users since the last decade or more only owns a single internet capable device, which is their mobile.

90% mobile here, block everything but HTML most of the time, works for reading, music, banking, and online buying/selling self employed, juggling many things, on the road a lot, dont watch more than 2 short videos a week, and actualy cant say that there is anything media wise that compels me to use a larger screen....which is reserved for actual media creation, not consumption 100% agree that touch screen UI is not very good, horrible, but the missing components of instant connection to a lap top or desk top, or just keyboard and bigger screen are not quite a set up and forget thing, yet.

>- the entire iOS side of things has far fewer choices for any sort of effective ad blocking

That might be true in theory but I haven't seen many ads in practice. What type of sites are you going to that's laden with unblockable ads?

> if missing ublock is a true security concern you shouldn't be using chrome

Dude there are ads on every browsers. And the goal here is to protect her from malwares, not trackers (well at least that's not a priority).

> And the goal here is to protect her from malwares, not trackers (well at least that's not a priority).

Given how intransparent the programmatic advertising industry is and how often malicious actors have abused such advertising networks to spread malware... there is no distinction to make.

Many people here install ublock for elders and / or children and leave it. Now they might become target of ads that download malware.

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