WingNews logo WingNews
top | item 19185637

Web page service workers bypass ad-blockers after Chrome 72 upgrade?

111 points| ikisusi | 7 years ago |twitter.com

51 comments

order

nicoburns|7 years ago

It might sound dramatic, but if they do block or cripple ad blockers, then I think that could represent a turning point in Chrome's popularity. Even my non-technical friends use an ad blocker, and it's also one of the best defenses from viruses on the modern web, so people who do family tech support are likely to be pretty proactive in ensuring that the computers they look after are running browsers with ads blocked.

will_pseudonym|7 years ago

Blocking ads for non-savvy/elderly users is definitely a security issue. It's reducing the chance that they inadvertently install malware or fall into a social engineering scam because "Microsoft Support" needs their credit card number to secure their computer.

satokema|7 years ago

I hate Mozilla pushing their own things almost as much as Google (a screenshot service? I have a keybinding for that, thank you) but this will probably be the straw that makes me jump ship.

There's always IceCat I guess. Websites get away with loading files from a ridiculous number of third-party servers and it's pretty frightening when you look at the uMatrix tab for it.

rohan1024|7 years ago

This could backfire since websites will be benefit from Chrome's move. They can subtly start supporting chrome more over other browsers. Asking users to switch to Chrome. And there are enough people who won't give second thought while making the switch.

AnIdiotOnTheNet|7 years ago

I'd go farther and say that the web is basically unusable without an ad blocker.

dmortin|7 years ago

The majority of people don't use an adblocker (otherwise the ad based ecosystem would not work) and if you ask them if they want to pay for the sites they visit instead of seeing ads then most of them choose free with ads.

One visits lots of sites while browsing and paying for each of them is simply not feasible. The solution would be some kind of universal micropayment scheme, but it's unclear how such a sytem could be adopted universally, because making the users setting up multiple micropayment providers in their browsers will not work.

strict9|7 years ago

Even if this is chalked up to something inadvertent, it's only a matter of time before it happens for good. Google will likely win this arms race, at least within Chrome.

The browser from the mega company that gets nearly all revenue from ads will eventually close that hole.

I switched to Firefox about a year ago in anticipation of this specific change, and haven't missed a thing.

coffekaesque|7 years ago

In the past few months several services I (used to) use, one of them being paid Spotify, started to crack down on adblockers and anti-adblockers killers. I don't feel this is just a coincidence, together with Chrome changes.

I'm pretty happy about this as I want the ad companies to start getting desperate and throwing punches. It's like people won't see how bad the situation is until you they get shit almost literally thrown in their faces. Tracking, data collection and malware are too invisible for people to care.

colejohnson66|7 years ago

It wasn’t paid Spotify. It was the free one. People who provide a negative value to Spotify were having their accounts disabled

cronix|7 years ago

It sounds like ad blockers need to work on the os level now and not a browser extension. Just block all requests from the machine to the ips.

fzzzy|7 years ago

They’ll just serve the ads from the same ip as the content then, or even embed it right in the same request as the content.

verdverm|7 years ago

DNS based blocking still works :]

okket|7 years ago

Not for Youtube and I guess that is what Google mostly cares about.

dogecoinbase|7 years ago

This is why Google is pushing DNS-over-HTTPS with an in-browser resolver.

vezycash|7 years ago

Doesn't chrome circumvent host-file blocking? At least it did for me in windows before I switched to Firefox permanently.