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Comment by susi22 | Hacker News Reader

There is a HUGE controversy about Adblock plus. One blogger uncovered some of their business methods. They have Mafia like structures and extort businesses. Unfortunately it's only in German and I have yet to find an English site report about it.

Main article (very detailed):

http://www.mobilegeeks.de/adblock-plus-undercover-einblicke-...

They've been trying to cover up their methods and simply lied about it. Stay away from Adblock Plus.

Some shorter article:

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Adblock-Plus-Weitere-...

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Use Adblock instead. Adblock Plus is another product entirely, unrelated despite the name trading on the popularity of Adblock.

Yes, they are separate, but the history of the names is complicated. See "why are the names so similar?" on https://getadblock.com/adblock-is-not-adblock-plus

Alright, that's enough, I don't trust these guys to tell me which ads should be blocked and which shouldn't. Uninstalled.

Thanks, that first link is awesome! Well, at least if you can look past the boatload of sarcasm :/

Is there an alternative?

To Adblock? I use a system level HTTP proxy (Glimmerblocker [1] on OS X, Privoxy elsewhere [2]) because I don't want to encounter ads in e.g. my RSS reader.

To an advertising-based business model? Unclear.

[1] http://glimmerblocker.org [2] http://www.privoxy.org

The problem / article is about ADBLOCK PLUS - not with the normal Adblock. Two different beasts.

MVP hosts file blocks ads on Windows machines by editing the hosts file. No 3rd party software needed. http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

Seems like it should work on other OSs too, actually. Thanks for the link.

I use "Adblock Edge" as an alternative. It's basically a fork of adblock plus but without the "acceptable ads" feature.

I never appreciated the difference or history of the Adblock and Adblock Plus plugins. I'm currently removing ABP from all my desktops and laptops in favour of Adblock Edge. Thanks.

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