What the media doesn't want you to know about ad-blockers

New York Times CEO caused a stir a few weeks back when he made a speech about users that visit news websites like his New York Times website, and the fact that they shouldn't be allowed to consume content or visit sites if they hide behind ad blockers.

The problem we face as users, is if these sites implement rules like this, we can't visit some websites unless we uninstall our ad blocker plug ins.  As a tech consultant company, madTECH recommends the use of ad-blockers as a browser extension plug in.  Some examples are:

Adblock Plus, Admuncher, Ghostery, Unblock Origin.

However, the benefits of using Ad-Blockers include the blocking of ransom ware.  Ransom ware is one of the most aggressive forms of malware where it encrypts data on your drive, and the criminals responsible won't release the key to unlock the data until you pay them a ransom.  I have covered this on our website here: http://madtech.com.au/services/backups/.

The ironic part is, the news websites that want to stop users that use ad-blockers are the same news websites that offered ransom ware and malware to its users, after having their ad networks hijacked by criminal hackers.  These news websites included The Times, The BBC, and AOL.

The Forbes website  in January forced users to turn off their ad-blockers, then immediately served them with pop-under malware, ready to infect computers and most likely designed to silently steal passwords, personal information, and banking information.

As always madTECH recommends the following to protect your devices: Ad-blockers, Anti-virus, up to date operating system, and of course backups.  This way if you get hit with ransom ware, you can just nuke your entire hard drive, and recover from a backup.

Sources: Glitch News, cjr.org,