And as Rednose announced here comes Polonus’s view on the matter,
Well the question was is an adblocker adding to security. And the answer must be a definitely yes as an additional layer of defense where malicious ads are concerned. Mal-ad campaigns can be huge and could pose a real threat to browser users. And it still is very much so, that what you cannot click, cannot infest you - a basic truth! So running a decent adblocker with the right subscription formula inside a browser can indeed be a good additional protection against malware.
ABP has a very high standard and developer Palant sought to have good technology there, but it is no longer the block-all-ads an adblocker should be. The pay-model there is to let “acceptable ads” through from big players against allegedly 30% of the costs that goes directly into the coffers of ABP’s investment firm.
From the old-fashioned “block-all-ads” blockers Adguard Adblocker and uBlock Origin are the best, to be combined inside Google Chrome with the use of uMatrix, an extension to block much more from a website than just ads and malicious domains etc.
Here is a good read why keeping an decent adblocker with the right subscriptions and well updates running inside a browser is a must nowadays, read: - again huge malvertising campaign: https://blog.malwarebytes.org/malvertising-2/2015/09/malvertising-attack-hits-realtor-com-visitors/
On a smartphone I would use the ABP browser, so you get a choice to browse that way, because an Android without adblocking possible is a threat machine.
I also have this protection against those that wanna kill my adblocker - https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer#anti-adblock-killer--reek You can subscribe to the filterlist with your adblocker of choice. I have reek/anti-adblock-killer running insite Google Chrome via Tampermonkey. Know that trying to circumvent adblocker’s (ads_bypasser_user scripts etc.) and serving ads via main website home pages comes created by the best brains in the field.
There is a constant war going on between the creators of monitoring, tracking and malicious and harmless ad-launching on the one side and those that try to protect against this on the other. So all purpose adblockers also protect against intended criminal and/or unintended infection and abuse by crafty methods that may facilitate such threats.
So until these threats go away I block all ads so ads cannot be abused by malcreants and SEO redirect nerds.
As long as the general threat from malicious ads goes on on a gigantic scale as it does, I will keep blocking all ads that adblockers allow me to block.
Damian
