> > I thought I’d read that even common adblocker programs are now deciding > which ads to let through (ie: who has paid them to be “relevant”). I think > “Adblock Plus” was the topic of the article. >
I've been using ABP for several months now in IE11 on my work machine, and it's quite good, as it seems to remove a lot of garish garbage from the screens, but not all. I have unticked "Allow some non-intrusive advertising". The mere presence of such an option indicates that someone has gotten to the ABP people and corrupted or bribed them into allowing certain paid ads through. They claim this is an honest and necessary feature, but I think they're a bunch of traitors to the intellectual aspirations of Western Civilisation. I would like to add patterns to the ABP block list, but the documentation is impenetrable or incomplete even to a developer, and when I did locate the magic file and assumed it was the right one, adding my lines had no effect. The file is gigantic and editing it manually is an unreliable experience. The instructions on the ABP site don't seem to match reality, or they're talking about different browsers and don't tell you that. I don't think ABP blocks cookies, but I've not investigated. I have IE11 set to prompt for all cookies. For a couple of hours you will be prompted to madness, but then it slows away to nothing and you can be sure that only necessary ones are present. I wrote a small app to list cookies in a grid and I can delete bad ones. *GK*
