Apple neutered ad blockers in Safari, but unlike Chrome, users didn't say a thing

ZDNet ^ | September 21, 2019 | By Catalin Campinu

[Seruzawa]

Baaaaa!

[DaxtonBrown]

I’ved moved to Brave. I want Google out of business, they are big brother.

[Swordmaker]

ZDNet claims that Apple’s Safari has deprecated and shut off all ad blocker extensions over the past 18 months, yet nobody has complained about it (something the author is attributing to the “small” installed base of iOS and Safari users). I wonder how they can state with a straight face that over 1.2 billion users can be called a “small user base”. My ad blocker is still working fine on those webpages I want it to work on. Anyone else? Personally, I think this may be a FUD article as we are still within the product release FUD Season, and also only six days away from the end of Apple’s end of Fiscal Year, another normal time for FUD articles to appear attempting to force down the value of AAPL stock. —PING!

Thanks to Freeper BTerclinger for the heads-up on this article.

POSSIBLE APPLE FUD ARTICLE BASED ON TIMING ALONE
PING!

If you want on or off the Apple/Mac/iOS Ping List, Freepmail me.

[Albion Wilde]

I am totally hating the new environment without UBlockPlus.

[softengine]

I’ve moved off of Google’s platforms as well, but I’ve not heard of Brave before. How would you say it compares to Opera or Tor?

[Swordmaker]

I have noticed an increase in pop-over ads on many webpages while seeing fewer on-page ads. This may be a response to the newer pre-rendering blocking the app based blocking Apple and Google both instituted. Google doesn’t block it’s own ads in their Android devices of course.

[al_c]

My adblockers are still working just fine and dandy.

[Skooz]

I’ve used Brave since it was in beta.

Best browser I’ve ever used, and that goes back to Netscape.

[Swordmaker]

My adblockers are still working just fine and dandy.

I’ve never seen that sample alert screen that ZDNet has in the article. . . And so are mine. I think most ad blocker extensions just adapted their extensions to Apple’s new rules to incorporate the new approach to intercept the ads before trying to render the webpage instead of doing it afterwards. That’s likely why we are seeing pop-over ads. I know that on some particular webpages I cannot post a comment until I’ve located all the pop-overs and closed them, even though I can type in the comment window on the page. Irritating at best. Usually it’s a Disqus comment window.

[Mr. Jeeves]

Brave is great - but I have problems with some subscription database sites for work and sometimes have to use Chrome (or Chromium) to get those to render pages properly. Which is OK, because they have no advertising.

For random poking around the web, Brave is best. Whatever it blocks is something you are better off not seeing. :)

[csvset]

I use AdBlockerPlus on my iphone and Ipad. It blocks some ads, not all. Apple just wants to make sure you experience the internet the way they intend it to be, ads and all.

A big minus on Apple’s part, just part of their ideology of , “We know what’s best for you” overlord mindset. Apple, slightly less evil than google.

[DaxtonBrown]

Haven’t used opera or tor. But Brave is pretty solid, on par with firefox. Just blocks the crap.

[MTsumi]

When’s this supposed to have taken effect? My adblocker works flawlessly.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Apple’s respect for your privacy is lightyears ahead of Google.

[jimtorr]

Wipr still working for me. My biggest current complaint is Bing.com aggregating sports news. Many, many video thumbnail links to NBC Sports website, so can take a long time to download and format the page, with my uber-slow inter web connection.

[Swordmaker]

When’s this supposed to have taken effect? My adblocker works flawlessly.

Over the last year and a half. . .

That’s why I called this a FUD (Fear, Uncertinty, and Doubt) article. . .

[Openurmind]

Please let me share as someone who has tried them all including Brave, right now the most secure set up is Firefox with the “Ghostery” ad blocker and the “NoScript” script blocker. But... It requires some work and effort on the user’s part now and then to make some things render or play. I have no problem needing to turn on one of 35 blocked scripts to watch a certain video or view an image. This means ALL are being blocked up front and I can allow just the individual scripts as needed if I truly “need” to see it.

[Openurmind]

When it comes to website trackers, it is not the ads that are the problem, it is the “scripts” they impose on you. These are the things that ad blockers do not see and catch you need to worry about.

For instance... When you go to Youtube even as a guest not logged in, the ads might be blocked by your adblocker. But the scripts that turn on and access your Location, Camera, and Microphone are still in operation without your knowledge. Only a good script blocker can catch these and allow you to make sure they are actually OFF.

[Albion Wilde]

And I don’t want to use Chrome or Firefox. Any other suggestions? Have you tried Brave?