August 28, 2012
Whenever you visit a site with a Like, Tweet or +1 button, you're actually sharing data with Facebook, Twitter or Google. And that's not all. There are hundreds of advertising and data collection companies that know quite a bit about your browsing habits. Luckily, no matter what your browser of choice might happen to be, there is a way to stop social networks and advertising companies from tracking your every move on the Web.
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August 3, 2012
Privacy, privacy, privacy. The Internet is known for its anonymity. Without personal privacy, it would be a very dangerous place. But are these companies infringing on privacy rights? How exactly does a website track its users? And what do companies do with that data? Let's look into it here.
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May 15, 2012
While Flash is on its way out and about to be replaced by HTML5, it is still used abundantly for web content, predominantly for displaying annoying ads. Not only are a lot of flash elements irritating, Flash also consumes significant amounts of bandwidth and is known to be a security risk. So there are good reasons to block it.
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April 22, 2012
Leaving ethical discussions aside (since I made my views on that quite clear last time), it is nonetheless true that ad-blocking is a real problem for bloggers and site owners the world over whose only source of income is ad revenue. With that understood, let's look objectively at some tactics you can use to deal with ad-block users, and the effects those tactics might have.
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April 15, 2012
Last week we asked for your opinion regarding Instagram on Android. With only 186 voted on this poll, the main conclusion is that this is not an issue many of you care about, which is as good an answer as any! So out of 186 votes in total, 36% think it’s good to have Instagram [...]
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March 14, 2012
It’s no secret that we’re not huge fans of Adblock here at MakeUseOf. But we know that some of you won’t let go of Adblock until it’s pried out of your cold, dead hands. If you must use Adblock, you can still support MakeUseOf and other websites you love by whitelisting us. It's time for a truce between Adblock users and respectful advertisers.
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March 4, 2012
Over the past few months, I've been contacted by a good number of readers who have had problems downloading our guides, or why they can't see the login buttons or comments not loading; and in 99% of cases, it's because they're running one these plugins - AdBlock, NoScript, or Ghostery - which I shall hereby refer to as the "trifecta of evil". Here's why.
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September 6, 2011
One of the reasons for the Internet’s surge in popularity is the cost of most online content – or rather, the lack of cost. That’s not to say the content is free, however. Almost every site is supported by advertisements (including MakeUseOf), and sites are paid for displaying them either per-click or, in some cases, via a flat monthly fee.
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September 2, 2011
Ads are a necessary evil. In the offline world, they inform, entertain, and let the producers make money so that they can continue producing ‘great’ content for us. Thankfully when it comes to all browsers, you can stay away from the ad-war by using the available ways to block ads. Here we look at a Firefox add-on, and three more options for Chrome users.
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December 11, 2010
There may be actually more than one reason for you to want to block Facebook widgets you see on almost any webpage you land on: First, you are concerned about your privacy and don’t want Facebook to personalize your browsing or to give away your information to third-party sites. In this case, besides using the [...]
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October 27, 2010
Encouraging you to “Like,” “Tweet”, “Digg”, and “Stumble” content, buttons for social networks spill on to almost every page on the modern Internet. If you prefer to copy URLs yourself, AdBlock can keep social networks where they belong: their own pages. Recently, we taught you how to use Adblock to keep you safe from malware, [...]
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July 8, 2010
As with any web browser, users of Opera may want to block annoying advertisements from appearing. For some users this functionality is so important that they will only use a web browser that has a good ad blocker available (usually this means Firefox,or perhaps Chrome). Opera does not have as wide of a user base [...]
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November 30, 2009
In addition to the most popular add-ons, there are a couple more that have proven to be very useful, but that many people have never heard of: OpenDownload or RunDownload and Webmail Ad Blocker.
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October 13, 2009
For a lot of us Google Chrome is still not hot enough. The reason? It’s still not extendable enough like Firefox. Ever since it came out, users have cried out for ways to tweak the browser to make it the Jack of all trades. The easiest way of course is through add-ons as Firefox calls [...]
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September 17, 2009
One of the main reasons that so many people like Firefox is because there are thousands of add-ons available that you can use to customize your browser experience. And one of the most popular add-ons for Firefox is AdBlock. AdBlock blocks the advertisements on websites and lets you browse distraction free. Quite a few people [...]
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