Hi Guest Topsie,

The issue for me about these websites collecting information and the ads has to do with concern over privacy issues…… mine! Google and Co do what is called 'data mining' and they collect this information using it for their on commercial purposes and on selling it to other people for their commercial purposes and most of us have no idea about the scale of this data mining.

There is no 'informed consent' about what they collect about you and your information or 'internet profile' is worth money to people out there. You and I certainly dont get paid for giving them our personal information.

Ads on the Internet are basically like junk food on main street and I can do without both in my life. Its about choice.

I'm not sure if it can be completely stopped but I have managed to significantly reduce the amount of junk I see on a web page or get sent to me by using all of these extensions in my browsers Safari and Firefox on a Mac.

They are: Adblock, Cookie Stumbler, Google Disconnect, Google Search Clean Up, DoNotTrackMe Online Privacy Protection, Ghostery, Facebook Disconnect, AVG Do Not Track and Click to Flash. All are free to download and install.

I use them all and they seem to coexist quite happily With the exception of Click to Flash that sometimes blocks something I want to see and needs to be temporarily disabled and then reenabled afterwards. It seems that there isn't one option that blocks everything. This approach has meant a significant reduction of Internet rubbish intruding on my browsing or research work.

I've found AdBlock to be especially useful because you can right click on any particularly annoying ad or element on a particular web page and then permanently block it from appearing again on that page. This is particularly useful when the site decides to redesign its page to 'improve the customer experience' and that sort of shite!

Cookies are a different issue. Some you might want to keep, like Mudcats. Some like Google Analytics that mine your data you might not. Some of these can be blocked through a firewall but thats another story in itself.

Cheers,

AndrezHi Guest Topsie,

The issue for me about these websites collecting information and the ads has to do with concern over privacy issues…… mine! Google and Co do what is called 'data mining' and they collect this information using it for their on commercial purposes and on selling it to other people for their commercial purposes and most of us have no idea about the scale of this data mining.

There is no 'informed consent' about what they collect about you and your information or 'internet profile' is worth money to people out there. You and I certainly dont get paid for giving them our personal information.

Ads on the Internet are basically like junk food on main street and I can do without both in my life. Its about choice.

I'm not sure if it can be completely stopped but I have managed to significantly reduce the amount of junk I see on a web page or get sent to me by using all of these extensions in my browsers Safari and Firefox on a Mac.

They are: Adblock, Cookie Stumbler, Google Disconnect, Google Search Clean Up, DoNotTrackMe Online Privacy Protection, Ghostery, Facebook Disconnect, AVG Do Not Track and Click to Flash. All are free to download and install.

I use them all and they seem to coexist quite happily With the exception of Click to Flash that sometimes blocks something I want to see and needs to be temporarily disabled and then reenabled afterwards. It seems that there isn't one option that blocks everything. This approach has meant a significant reduction of Internet rubbish intruding on my browsing or research work.

I've found AdBlock to be especially useful because you can right click on any particularly annoying ad or element on a particular web page and then permanently block it from appearing again on that page. This is particularly useful when the site decides to redesign its page to 'improve the customer experience' and that sort of shite!

Cookies are a different issue. Some you might want to keep, like Mudcats. Some like Google Analytics that mine your data you might not. Some of these can be blocked through a firewall but thats another story in itself.

Hope this helps a little.

Cheers,

Andrez

PS: As a current example of the Ad problem, on Mudcats front page, I block ads in Safari. But because there is an ongoing issue where the server seems to disappear or cant be found, I use Firefox to try and find the 'Cat. Firefox doesnt have the Ads blocked and so I see a stupid ad for something called POPCHERRY with a pic of a woman with large …. telling me to shop now. I can do without that sort of garbage day or night!