How to stay safe online using Ad(s) blocking plugins.
Adblocking plugin does exactly what it name says ‘block ads’. But why block ads? Are they harmful? Can they be used to hack my system? Well, the answer is yes, and no! Originally ads were developed for digital advertisements. this enables bloggers and other site owners to monetize their websites. Now you may be wondering if ads aren’t actually malicious, then why should I block them?
That’s a good question and the answer is, Malicious people decided to use this great stuff for malicious purpose, using good to archive evil!!! how evilly crazy, but that’s it. For a very long period of time hackers have been using one good technology or the other to achieve evil.
NB: There are many adblocking plugins. These are among the most popular ones: AdblockPlus, ad blocking, AdBlock, AdLock, uBlock Plus Adblocker, Adblocker Ultimate, Noscript, AdGuard, and many more.
With all these tools out there, you can choose anyone you desire to use. We will advise you to check out their functionalities and select the one suitable for your needs. Some are totally free while others are paid for but they have free versions. Let’s pick one which is probably the most popular one “ADBLOCK PLUS”.
ADBLOCK PLUS: This is great, easy to set up with amazing features, supports a wide range of browsers you can use it even on your smartphones (android and iPhone), and to add it up it’s FREE. We will be looking at how to install and set it up because it sometimes considered as the best of them all with over ten million downloads on chrome only. Ten million! oh yes, this has to be a great tool to be used loved this much.
To get this tool all you need to do is search for it on your favorite search engine or visit the official website https://adblockplus.org click on download and it will get downloaded, a pop-up will ask you to accept adding it to your browser, do so and adblockPlus is up and running. You may choose to allow it to run on default settings or you may customize it to suit your needs. We will show you how to set it up.
SETTING-UP ADBLOCKPLUS
Open your browser, at the top right corner you will see all the plugins you have installed on your system it will look like this.
If you are yet to install this great tool, search for it on your favorite browser. E.g if you are using Google chrome search for AdblockPlus for Chrome.
Click on the adblockPlus icon and click on the settings icon. An interface just like the one below will be displayed to you
By default, it allows some ads that are acceptable. These are ads that not annoying and will not interfere with the page you are viewing.
On the general settings, you can choose to block additional tracking, some websites have additional tracking capabilities. They keep track of your information AdblockPlus have the capability to stop them, you just need to enable it by selecting the checkbox on the select option because this is not enabled by default.
Another amazing feature of this tool is blocking social media tracking, enabling it is also very simple you just need to click the checkbox and you are good to go.
Next on the list is WHITELISTING SITES. For those of us that don’t know what a whitelist is, it is a list containing trusted sites. So let’s say you know a website and you trust the website you can add it to your whitelist. By doing so, all the ads blocking features of this tool will not work on this site because whitelisting it will tell AdblockPlus not to block any ad on this site. Doing this is very easy you just need to click on whitelisted sites and an interface like this will be displayed for you
Let’s assume your friend has a website and she makes some money from its through ads, you then decide not to block any ads from her site, what you need to do is, Input the name of this site in the space provided for you and click on ADD WEBSITE.
That’s easy, right? Yes, it is.
Moving to the next thing on the list is the advanced option. Don’t get scared by the name. It is very easy to understand and configure. When you click on Advanced you will see something like this:
By default, all this is enabled, show number of ads blocked in icon, ‘show Block element’ right-click menu item, show ‘AdblockPlus panel’ in developer tools, show useful notifications You can choose not to show them by unchecking the checkbox.
Below this is the filter option which looks just like this
There are quite a number of filters that include both built-in and filters which can be added via URLs this can be filters created by others and made available for public use. Make sure you use only the filters you need and nothing more.
Did we talk about filters designed by others right? Yeah, we did. But do you know that you can create your own filter? That’s pretty cool, right? yeah, it is. You may ask but how will I do that? Is simple just scroll down and you will see something just like this:
If you wish to create your own filter, just click on Learn how to write filters (English only) and you are on your way to creating your own filter.
That’s cool, right? I am sure it is. Your wish has just been granted.
This is where we stop this week. If you have any questions, contributions, suggestions, or corrections, do not hesitate to write it in the comment section, and don’t forget to share so we can win over this cybercrime.
Stay secure and we’ll talk to you next week.