Stop, Thief! Why Using an Ad Blocker Is Stealing

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I not only use AdBlock, I also sideloaded AdAware on my phones to do the same. Currrently the ONLY reason I still root my phones and tablets. Advertisers should pay for the bandwidth they steal from me while pushing their ads on my devices. I don't hear the author addressing that issue.
I will continue to use only browsers that have add-ons like AdBlock available.
 
This page is loaded with what I consider acceptable advertising. I can't deny the tasteful way this article has been presented. However I concur with the top comment at current.

If your flashy adverts to sell me the latest telephone I can't afford, are so intensively demanding on system resources that it prevents me from viewing a page on a phone because a quad core phone isnt powerful enough to display it, frankly I'll be so livid I wont want your phone even if the advert is a good price for once.

I use the above as an example, as my phone until last month was the most powerful computer in the house.... So much motion flashing and audio at offensive volumes with no volume dialer, made the internet unusable to my old pc without blocking 80% of the adverts.

Now I have a new pc, cost £1000+, a I5-4690k based system, and there are still adverts out there that can make it pause for thought... admittedly its seconds rather than minutes now but thats too much to ask for "just getting across a message"

As for the security aspect, an example, I had my mother phone me crying because a pop up said it was from the EU force of internet safety, had encrypted her files and wouldnt let her leave the page or open any files without going out the house that moment to start a balance transfer to pay a "fine" to retrieve access to her pc because she had "insufficient internet protection installed". It was an obnoxious advert that created looping "Are you sure you want to leave" pop ups preventing her from leaving.

Now I went over and task managered the advert to close, rebooted the pc and lo- access was restored.

Adverts that reduce non-tec savvy pensioners to tears? I'm sorry but whose the one stealing money? Me for installing ad-block so that she is safer financially, technologically and emotionally safer? Or the bogus ad from a low grade fraudulent anti-virus company?
 
The way I see it, in order to see an ad, you have to be connected to the Internet and downlooad the image/text/video into your computer's memory, cache, or hardware, even if for just a moment. Ad blockers simply enable me to choose what to download and what not to download. You can't force people to load something onto their computers that they don't want.
 
Never thought about installing an ad-blocker before but I might consider it now that I've read this 'article' covertly advertising Ad-blocker plus.
Thanks to the author for that and I hope he was paid good money to write 'his' opinion on the matter :)

 
So technically if we skip ads on TV, does that mean we're also stealing. This guy is MORON! The internet never started with ads as it's source so take a flying leap and stop writing crap... unless that's your goal?
 
First of all forgive my typing because I'm doing this from my phone lol..

""Online ads — from pop-ups that cover the page, to sponsored links that look like content, to noisy video ads that start playing out of nowhere — have a well-deserved reputation for annoying users.""

ding ding ding..... Yes, annoying, but also intrusive and have a huge potential of stealing personal data..

""It's understandable that readers are frustrated. Content providers and ad networks need to do a better job of screening their ads to remove the most annoying and technically disruptive offenders. And there's no place for ads that spread malware — a problem easily avoided if you use antivirus software.""

Whats interesting is that you place the solution of malware on our hands, the reader. You can't have your cake and eat it too.. If you want us to see you ads, then you need to take responsibility if an ad on your website infects my computer..

You fail to understand that some of these "ads" only exist to steal personal data and spread malware.. So for me, if some ads are a threat, then all ads are a threat..

Your Burger Kind analogy is way off... You missed the big picture.. TV ads, although annoying, are timed and regulated.. Burger King not only pays for the time slot, but also had to create the content in the ad.. So Burger King takes a huge gamble and shoulders the responsibility of any ad they create.. Not to mention TV ads, so far, don't contain malware/viruses. The difference is, you don't want to shoulder any of the responsibility, all you want is the profit.

thats it, tired of typing..lol
 
while i completely support legitimate unobtrusive safe advertising, it is just too unsafe and irritating to not use adblock. a few things which are unacceptable and the reason why adblock is so popular:

-whole twin sidebar ads. this is completely excessive.
-annoying animated or flashing advertisements
-fake download or virus scan button scams
-malware hidden inside advertisements
-advertisements leading to scam sites

if advertisements were all for 100% legitimate sites, unobtrusive and for malware free i'd support them. in fact, i do view and support such legitimate ads.

in fact, most manually added and labeled advertisement banners which link to legitimate sites do not get blocked by adblock plus. generally only common scripted advertisements and popups get blocked.
 
So sad to hear of the imminent demise of Tom's Hardware, as that is all I can seriously take away from this article. You have been a useful reference point for many years, although it is a long time since I built a PC of my own.

While I personally don't run ad-blockers, the comments above certainly make that choice feel more foolish than ever. I read this article with an open mind, perhaps hoping to feel a little re-assurance that my (lazy) decision not to install a blocker into my web browser of choice might somehow be interpreted as a virtue. Instead I read about stealing food out of the mouths of children who (I hope) don't even work for the site. Quick date check - nope, not April 1st. I'm left assuming this is the desperate corporate suicide note of an editor who can no longer pay the bills, and is striking out at his only remaining target, his own audience. That never ends well.

Thanks again for information over the years. It will be a shame to see you go, but I'm afraid with this last article, I will not mourn your passing 🙁
 
Perhaps I should seek to frequent a website that is more appreciative of the input from it's readers rather than one that brands them as thieves.
Click to expand...
I'm a reader and I wasn't branded a thief here. I DO think the ads need to be adjusted/toned down, but an ad-free website must have other revenue sources. Especially one as expensive to run as a full hardware review and news site.
By this logic, of course. I'm beginning to think that what this is actually going to cause is the death of for-profit web journalism. "What?" I can hear you all scream. Hardware review sites are not going to stop existing, even if there is no money at all to be made it in. There are plenty of people who are willing to review hardware, at little to no profit (small tech sites are already run by them). The only thing this is going to cause is the death of big for-profit organizations.
Click to expand...

Killing off ad-supported sites leads to these types of outcomes:

Paywall/subscription sites. This would reduce the number of sites I follow by quite a lot, and would make searching for information or news on the web really horrible. It would probably shrink the market in general and there would be less talented unbiased reviewers in the field. Which leads to...

Ultra-biased review sites. Now they can't afford to pay reviewers to analyze products, nor pay for the hosting for the site - but wait! The hardware companies will give you money if you do things just a *certain way*. Run this benchmark, not that, test with these settings, write a gushingly positive article, give a negative review to that competing product, etc.

Amateur reviews. Some random dopes run shoestring budget "review" sites that do horrible reviews of products that don't properly test or analyze anything. Picture a "review" site in blog format. "This graphics card is awesome because I bought it and it's awesome." or "I couldn't get this to work so I think it's junk. Don't buy it. What's a BIOS update again?"
 
Most people's spending habits are already well established. So bogging down their system with pointless advertisements accomplishes nothing. How then does blocking those ad's remove revenue from a website?? Since the block is done on the user end, the block should be completely transparent to the website.

If anything, annoying advertisements make me want to avoid using their products.
 
Nothing is going to tell me I can't use adblock and nobody will control whether I do or not. I don't feel bad using it at all. Seeing a webpage with 40 million annoying advertisements on it is disgusting. My system can handle these fine, I just don't want to see idiotic advertisements everywhere on MY computer.
 
Blocking food from children? Drama queen, much?

Ultimately, the web is the wild west of advertising. In TV ads, these ads cannot steal your information, mine your data, run malicious scripts, etc. Incidentally, there are also ways to skip these, and that has hardly killed Television.

Meanwhile, on the computer, Ads can take a silent experience and make it very loud. They can force you away from what you're doing (particularly problematic if you're on mobile and using an in-app browser. A number of links off Reddit are more or less unreadable without an adblocker due to the redirects), pretend to be a part of something else (e.g. download pages with 16 "download" button, where the 15 ads clearly have the larger ones) and, even if you don't notice them, they can still use exploits and vulnerabilities to mine your data or potentially take over your computer, clearly without your consent or knowledge. Definitely unethical, possibly even illegal.

So how can we ensure we aren't stalked by these ne'er-do-wells? Ideally, sites would police themselves and only allow quality, ethical advertisements, but due to greed and laziness, this simply is not the case. We need some other way to protect ourselves... enter Adblock et. al.

Adblock is a business, yes. Notably, they are in a position to make a huge amount of money by using their ad-blocking software to spy on its users and sell that to their "approved" advertisers, which would really be a racket. Instead, they chose a more ethical path, wherein they don't really make any money off their users. Instead, they chose to allow an inoffensive subset of ads, which, yes, they do require a pittance from advertisers to keep the lights on, but keeping up with the unscrupulous methods is hard work, and there aren't many people who'd do it for free.

This reins ads back down to inoffensive levels, as they should have been in the first place. These protections would not need to exist if sites would simply keep their ad quality high.

Sites like Tom's Hardware. Don't act innocent; there are 26 different sites loaded by this page alone that are ignoring my do not track requests. You think I'm not going to protect myself from that?
 
Reading through these comments took away a lot of time I could have spent looking at advertisements. Therefore, commenters are stealing food from children's mouths.

As long as were whining: Think about jobs lost (and all of the children that would starve) if Planned Obsolescence weren't integral to society. Try and argue that point and see what it stirs up.
 
Thanks for informing me about this Ad-Blocker Program! P.S. ah heck off Avram Piltch. Now I will have a huge smile on my face when I visit your site with Ad-Blocker on! Cheers you (insert insult here)
 
Lol @ ad blocking software being theft. Have you ever considered changing your revenue model?
I would consider ad blocking software to be more akin to a bug screen on a window that you have open to get some fresh air in the house. You want the air, not the bugs that could theoretically get in the window with it being open. I may be depriving the bugs from getting into my house(and propagating), but they have no business there anyway.
 
An ethics talk as to why we should disable our adblocker? I thought this was a tech site.

People that know how, will disable ads; simple as that. Ads are annoying and CPU/GPU intensive (as in, I'm wasting energy for stuff I don't want to see in the first place). Find a workaround (or a middle ground) or lose profit.
 
I completely disagree with this article. Mr Piltch, can you please disable all of your spam filters for your e-mail? That's essentially what you're getting at. BRING IN THE ADVERTISEMENTS! You are out of your mind, now making me check who authors an article, and if I see yours, definitely skip. Complete trash man. Can't believe I'm going to sign up for an account just to tell you this, but this article actually has pissed me off all day! Haha.
 
You can take this logic and shove it. The internet was originally meant to be free and still should be free. There is plenty of free content on the web that gets pushed out by paid product placement keeping these sites in the top 10-20 on a search result. You dont like this then dont post things on the internet. We will be happy to stay with free content.

In addition in many states, like Virginia, it is illegal to circumvent a security feature of a users computer system. A pop up blocker is a security feature. So when you bombard a users browser with clicks to get your add through you are committing a misdemeanor or a felony in some cases. No one has time to deal with that as a legitimate crime now but when enforcement entities discover how much money they could potentially gain through enforcement the tables could turn.

In short you dont like add blocking leave and dont let the door hit you in the @$$.
 
Dude, you have successfully concocted your own alter-reality. I have seen people get carried away with supporting their own company in the face of reality but this takes the cake. Dude, go on a vacation for a while. get some fresh air. Your mind is spinning some pretty wild stuff.
 
The Internet development was paid for by US taxpayers.

I was paying for that, thru my tax money, all those years.

Don't tell me I am stealing from someone who never paid for the development.
 
An ethics talk as to why we should disable our adblocker? I thought this was a tech site.

People that know how, will disable ads; simple as that. Ads are annoying and CPU/GPU intensive (as in, I'm wasting energy for stuff I don't want to see in the first place). Find a workaround (or a middle ground) or lose profit.
Click to expand...

Failed to mention (very real) privacy concerns over web tracking and a history of ad exploits known to infect computers with malware. People taking advantage of advertising companies that don't think twice to take advantage of an end user -- yeah, I think that fits the saying, "what comes around goes around."
 


I find it hard to try to justify adds. Its kind of like trying to justify a door to door salesman.
 
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