It garbles advertisers’ data as a result, but you must disable uBlock Origin to run it; they can’t work simultaneously. I recently moved to it and, so far, am never looking back!
Google has put a lot of effort into detecting and blocking stuff like this. They call it “click fraud”, if you want to look it up.
It’ll just mean they start ignoring clicks from you.
That, I guess, it’s the whole point. Stopping being tracked 🙂
This feels like reverse psychology on a little kid.
“That’s it, I’m not tracking you anymore! >:(”
“Oooh nooo, what have I done! Oh how much I would wish to be tracked :(”
“No, you won’t convince me to change my mind >:(”
“Oh well, guess I’ll have to live without being tracked, what a shame that is.”
Throw in a dash of track-me-not (https://www.trackmenot.io/) and maybe they’ll start ignoring your search queries too! Worst case my actual searches are so buried in the bs deciding what to market would be easier from my screen-name.
Fascinating, thanks for sharing! What is the best, current Firefox fork of this one, if you know?
it’s a browser extension for Firefox, not a fork of Firefox. Or did I misunderstand you?
I was reacting to its GitHub:
This project is NOT currently being maintained. Code is made available for developers to fork. This is the FireFox version of the project, for Chrome see https://github.com/vtoubiana/TrackMeNot-Chrome.
So I’m wondering which active fork is best to go off of for Firefox. I could’ve been clearer; my bad.
can confirm. You know those ‘google rewards’ things? they slowly stopped going for the results from trackmenot lol
it was nice to get $1 a month off my VPN subscription lol
Then that achieves the same goal. If they’re ignoring clicks from you, and you’re blocking their trackers, then they probably don’t have a good profile on you, because whatever they do have is either old, poisoned, or both.
if enough people start doing it might be effective
Not sure how true it was, but there was a YouTuber claiming that their videos were getting entirely demonetized because too many of their viewers had Ad blockers enabled. So even though 75% of people were seeing ads on the video, Google was keeping that ad revenue, withholding it all from the creator because 25% weren’t getting ads. The claim the youtuber made is that this will probably predominantly impact creators with a more tech savvy / privacy aware audience, resulting in less of that niche content.
Anyway, this is anecdotal, but I wouldn’t put it past Google to pass the issue to the creators for the actions of their consumers, even though it’s not their fault.
google has way too much power. its threat to everything
Creators who care about privacy should not support Google’s monopoly by using YouTube as their platform of choice.
legit, there are so many platforms out there, idc which one they use, but pretty please, just mirror your content. Why’s it so hard 😵💫. The group im referring to doesnt even have the “money ads” argument as what most small creators earn on yt is peanuts.
They call it “click fraud”,
No, click fraud is using botnets to click ads in your site to increase your revenue.
When Google can’t extract money from you that’s fraud!
They can still get money from this. In fact, they get more money from this than with uBlock.
They recognize how it undermines the digital advertising system, so they did everything in their power to get rid of it before it takes off.
We really should be recommending adNauseam instead of uBlock.
OK… If trust is bro, then they won
But I ain’t no middle schooler, so you need to explain like I am 5 how this solution is in fact superior to uBlock
Is there any proper research on this?
It is literally uBlock. It updates with uBlock, uses uBlock filtering, uBlock options, uBlock UI.
The only difference is that it also does ad fuckery and there is a button that you can press to configure the ad fuckery and see a log of the ad fuckery.
Other than that it is exactly uBlock.
They can still get money from this. In fact, they get more money from this than with uBlock.
They recognize how it undermines the digital advertising system, so they did everything in their power to get rid of it before it takes off. They’re fighting a generational war and don’t want us to even be aware of the tools we have to fight back.
We really should be recommending adNauseam instead of uBlock.
Just curious- if ads are for something illegal, couldn’t this expose me to liability for theoretically “clicking” it from my IP/device? And if ads are for something unsavory ( like a “chat with local cougars” site or something similar), wouldn’t they start to deliver me more such ads, thinking, wow this IP is the only one clicking every sex chat ad, send them more!
How many websites do you browse with links to truly illegal content?
If you live in a country with truly abysmal human rights, definitely don’t bother with this plugin, but in most cases you should be fine on the illegal side.
Even if somehow the website you’re browsing has some super sketchy ad to
buyillegaldrugshere.comor whatever, to get in trouble with the law in most civilized places you’d have to actually buy the illegal drugs, not just ping the illegal drugs IP. Especially since you can pretty easily prove to a judge that your system fetches ad links automatically and without further engagement.Not saying it can’t happen, just that it’s really unlikely you would be served an ad for something so illegal just clicking on it is a liability. The literally only case I can think of coming close is CSAM, but even then, if you’re regularly browsing websites that advertise CSAM, maybe find other websites to occupy your time? And I can just about guarantee any website serving CSAM ads is already doing illegal shit, so you should probably be more worried about that than an ad-click…
I’m not sure how many ads on different sites are sketchy. I don’t feel like finding out, that’s why I block it. There have been plenty of reasons that all sorts of illegal stuff gets inserted on well-meaning sites, so it seems like it’s inviting all sorts of trouble to automatically click stuff without consideration.
I’ve been recommending this for awhile, it’s nice to see someone else take up the mantle.
Yes, it clicks ads in addition to blocking them. Google removed it from its addon repository even though it wasn’t breaking any rules. They just removed it and kept it removed because there wasn’t sufficient backlash, the scumbags.
It’s the main reason why I use Firefox these days. it’s clear that the cabal will not allow anything that legitimately threatens their power structure, and make advertising less-effective for the same price is a gut punch they need.
Automated ad clicks probably are breaking the rules, TBF.
Don’t care. At this point I will take being actively malicious toward them.
Monopoly money
That comment is correct on so many levels…
Interesting, was wondering about this. This would also “help” the websites with more ad income right?
Potentially.
Yes. I prefer this to the whole “ethical ad” debacle people have had prioritized for them.
if thats true, brb setting up a website and a bot farm
Haha I imagine they need at least unique ip addresses to count. Now I wonder if for clicks to count you need to properly click through and load the target website with the same “browser fingerprint”.
Careful: that then enters the world of ad fraud, which randos like us doing the clicking isn’t considered as.
Can’t tell if 4/1 gag or not! Brilliant!
Oops, lol, I forgot about the date. This has existed for years.
This has been around for years. It’s legit.
I don’t know, just sounds like I’d be contributing to the marketers metrics so they can show “it works”. it’ll only make them invest in ads more. if anyone thinks capitalists are these genius level manipulators who know how everything works I only refer to the richest person alive being the least charismatic, least knowledgable, unfuckable troglodyte who keeps making an ass of himself.
if any of these companies suffer any losses or reduced profits they’ll just fire hardworking people, not one of them will turn around and say maybe the ads aren’t working when you actively work to show them that it is working.
… until they keep having to dismiss people and go, “… huh.” This is a marathon we’re playing. You certainly don’t have to use it, but I think the philosophy makes sense, especially given how AdNauseam doesn’t click on acceptable ads that don’t track you.
they will never go “huh”. you give way too much credit to corporate management.
Why can’t uBlock Origin and this thing work at the same time?
because it’s a modified uBlock Origin, so it’s like running two ad blocking plugins at once, which isn’t recommended. and if uBO blocks an ad first, AdNauseam won’t be able to detect it and click on it.
anyway, I remember reading a long time ago how that approach isn’t going to harm ad companies anyway, because [technical reasons that I don’t remember at all].
I use it because otherwise I’d use ublock anyways. So it either does it thing and if not, it’s the same result as ublock.
It’s a bit redundant to run both at the same time, considering they both practically do the same thing and one is built off of the other.
It’s not even practically the same thing, it is exactly the same plugin as uBlock Origin, same UI, blocklists, etc but with added features.
Some ads have used browser exploits to infect visitors in the past. So this is a very, very bad idea, if it actually is implemented in a way that is hard to filter for ad networks.
So the way I understand this to work, it’s 100% safe from the type of attack you’re describing.
You are clicking the link (asking the advertiser for the data) but then never actually fetching it.
So you can never get the malicious payload to be infected.
Im too scared to trust it works out fine in the end to use it, been raised on the idea that interacting with an ad in any way other than task managering the pop up is dangerous. Wheres the part of the code that makes it safe and a write up of how it functions, otherwise im fine just blocking ads with regular ublock.
What makes you think uBlock is safe without checking relevant code sections?
the part that’s safe is in the browser. it’s a basic fact of how http requests work that you can just request data and then not read it.
also, “task managering the popups”? unless i’ve missed some very weird development that has literally never worked, because popup windows are part of the parent process.
Back on Windows 95 through XP, each individual window was a process that could be killed in Task Manager, and popups opened in a new window.
really? sounds like a weird span of systems considering they share so little code. i’d like to read on how they did that.
It’s wholly incorrect.
I was fairly young, but I do remember using Windows 95 or 98 with Netscape and there were popups that had to be killed through the task manager (or equivalent, it was 30 years ago, so I don’t remember precisely).
Here you go, from the repo:
const visitAd = function (ad) { function timeoutError(xhr) { return onVisitError.call(xhr, { type: 'timeout' }); } const url = ad && ad.targetUrl, now = markActivity(); // tell menu/vault we have a new attempt broadcast({ what: 'adAttempt', ad: ad }); if (xhr) { if (xhr.delegate.attemptedTs) { const elapsed = (now - xhr.delegate.attemptedTs); // TODO: why does this happen... a redirect? warn('[TRYING] Attempt to reuse xhr from ' + elapsed + " ms ago"); if (elapsed > visitTimeout) timeoutError(); } else { warn('[TRYING] Attempt to reuse xhr with no attemptedTs!!', xhr); } } ad.attempts++; ad.attemptedTs = now; if (!validateTarget(ad)) return deleteAd(ad); return sendXhr(ad); // return openAdInNewTab(ad); // return popUnderAd(ad) }; const sendXhr = function (ad) { // if we've parsed an obfuscated target, use it const target = ad.parsedTargetUrl || ad.targetUrl; log('[TRYING] ' + adinfo(ad), ad.targetUrl); xhr = new XMLHttpRequest(); try { xhr.open('get', target, true); xhr.withCredentials = true; xhr.delegate = ad; xhr.timeout = visitTimeout; xhr.onload = onVisitResponse; xhr.onerror = onVisitError; xhr.ontimeout = onVisitError; xhr.responseType = ''; // 'document'?; xhr.send(); } catch (e) { onVisitError.call(xhr, e); } } const onVisitResponse = function () { this.onload = this.onerror = this.ontimeout = null; markActivity(); const ad = this.delegate; if (!ad) { return err('Request received without Ad: ' + this.responseURL); } if (!ad.id) { return warn("Visit response from deleted ad! ", ad); } ad.attemptedTs = 0; // reset as visit no longer in progress const status = this.status || 200, html = this.responseText; if (failAllVisits || status < 200 || status >= 300) { return onVisitError.call(this, { status: status, responseText: html }); } try { if (!isFacebookExternal(this, ad)) { updateAdOnSuccess(this, ad, parseTitle(this)); } } catch (e) { warn(e.message); } xhr = null; // end the visit };That’s pretty much it! Let me know if it doesn’t make sense, I can annotate it
You know this is the good shit because when it first came out a few years back google was running a huge disinformation campaign against it. You’d search for “adnauseum” in google and the first result would be an article from some weird advertising company calling is “insecure” and “malware” without any actual argumentation behind those claims, while no other search engine returned that article (I lost the screenshots, so yall are just gonna have to take my word for it). They also delisted it from the chrome store for not discernible reason. They were afraid.
But nowadays I’m willing to bet that they figured out how to detect adnauseum’s fake clicks and filtering it out. Stuff like that needs a talented development team to keep it up to date.
Has the same limitations as uBlock Origin with Manifest v3 and won’t work in Chrome.
It’s not even available on chrome because google removed it years ago.
They weren’t breaking any rules, but google saw it as a threat and kept it removed since there wasn’t sufficient backlash.
Really wish people would STFU about the “privacy” aspect about this. It gives junk data to trackers because it floods them with all the ads you’re coming across. The main purpose, though, is to charge advertisers money without giving them a service in return.
It’s sad most of you consumers can’t see the real significance of this software, but it really puts into perspective why most people are useful idiots these days.
Consumerism has won.
If you’re still using chrome at this point that’s on you.
I was actually curious about this as we’re forced to use Edge or.Chrome at work.
Or a Chrome derivative
I use Librewolf. The comment was meant as info for those who think that having uBlock as a base still holds significance in light of Manifest v3.
I meant the general “you.” “People” would have worked.
The solution is simple. Chrome ditches manifest v2? Ditch Chrome.
It’s not even available on chrome because google removed it years ago. They weren’t breaking any rules, but google saw it as a threat and kept it removed since there wasn’t sufficient backlash.
Really wish people would STFU about the “privacy” aspect about this. It gives junk data to trackers because it floods them with all the ads you’re coming across. The main purpose, though, is to charge advertisers money without giving them a service in return.
It’s sad most of you consumers can’t see the real significance of this software, but it really puts into perspective why most people are useful idiots these days.
Consumerism has won.
You could try being just a little optimistic if you want to sell your actually good points. Consumerism wins when you let it, and the only way to judge when it has are by your own merits, even now it gets to you with that mindset.
Is there an aspect of privacy through throwing loads of bullshit data though? Instead of blocking the tracking you flood it with crap
This would just give money to the advertisers.
This transfers money from the advertiser to the advertising agency, without creating a sale for the advertiser. This devalues the services of the agency.
I still don’t want to give those fuckers money. If I just use uBlock, the ad is never seen, thus no sale is made and the slimy ad company gets money.
Totally, it’s up to you. The idea for fake-clickers is the long game: the marketers think they’re landing clicks over months or possibly even years, but
willmay slowly realize (gotta account for the stubborn ones) that it’s ineffective and eventually pivot to different approaches, hopefully ones that involve less tracking (I can’t imagine what any worse approach could be, at least).
This would still make a connection to the ad servers that can then track me though.
I guess with a hardened browser and a VPN it would be alright.
At this point I think it’s better to poison the well.
I always liked using this on the premise of privacy-through-obfuscation. If the powers that be must get information from me, then i’d prefer to give them garbage information.
Exactly. You can’t completely avoid being tracked but you can ensure that your profile is just noise without any value to advertisers
And lots of it.
I always like this on the premise of charging advertisers money while giving them no audience in return.
IMO, this is a bit much.
It’s one thing to block ads, it’s another thing to essentially participate in an ad fraud scheme. If this simply hurt Google, I would have no issues (they are corrupt criminals, an American oligarchic institution), but you also risking harming independent sites that have done nothing wrong.
To each their own. I’m in your boat too, I think.
Why is advertising ok, but any response in opposition of it, is not?
This is an excessive approach that risks collateral damage to 3rd parties who are not involved.
I have no issues with blocking ads (internet is unusable without ublock origin + Pihole), but actually simulating clicks is IMO not the right approach.
I still don’t get why you think it’s not the right approach. Seems perfectly fine to me.
Because this will cause problems for independent website operators.
Blocking ads is one thing, but this risks fucking up their digital advertising accounts.
Isn’t that the point, to fuck up digital advertising accounts so the data is unreliable and can’t be used?
this will cause problems for independent website operators.
This may seem to be a legit criticism at first, but AdNauseam allows ethical ads so anyone using good, safe stuff should not get affected. There is an entire section in AN’s documentation about not clicking on this specific ad group.
As for the vast majority of the rest who don’t use ethical, non-tracking ads: let 'em have it! ⚔ AdNauseam users (and users of any similar tools; I don’t know what else is out there) must first hold a fundamental view that the tracking world is extremely violating, of which ads are a subset. Long gone are the glory days when ads were funny, appealing, and well-made, and didn’t track people; ad companies gather data on us and if they get hacked, that info flies out in the open: all without our knowledge or true consent. Is that something you’re fine with? Additionally, more and more ads are proving to be entire scams, or otherwise shams that did not fully deliver, that have harmed consumers who legitimately click through.
The long-term goal is to teach those who use malicious ads that this is an unacceptable, unsustainable practice and that they need to market in better ways if they wanna keep doing this (again, going back to the pre-Internet glory days when Coca-Cola, etc. ran awesome TV ads and when there was no or nearly no account-tracking—or just any semblance of it).
Good to hear.
No of course I am not down with tracking BS.
But I do use some smaller niche sites (for some of them I have subs or patron) and I would not want them to be hit (no clue what ad providers they use).
Collateral damage to advertisers? Sounds like a feature, not a bug.
You incorrectly use the term ad fraud, which addresses advertisers themselves automating clicks on their own links to generate fake income. There is nothing wrong with people-with-no-corporate-interest who click.
Remember, advertising is jist a new word they made to wash over the ick with its original name, propaganda. I’d rather not participate in any propaganda.
Good start. Now make a version that clicks each ad a random number of times from randomly generated IP addresses.
Ad Networks use browser fingerprinting to detect duplicate clicks, which is tied to your hardware, system locale, installed fonts etc.
Sounds like a solvable problem
Chameleon add-on for Firefox, randomly rotates your browser, OS, screen size, timezone, device type, language, and other customizable parameters every x minutes.
I’ve set it to do so every 5 minutes, and to omit desktop & tablet as device types (else some websites display the respective page) and timezones (messed up 2FA).
I also disabled blackberry and windows phone from the manufacturer ID, that would have the opposite effect from obscuring me.
For the rest of it, it’s working great.
Tell me how, then, because I don’t know how to get around the font thing. Everybody’s computer has a different set of fonts, and blocking browsers from seeing what fonts you have installed would help identify you even more.
That one browser which everyone hates despite it being the best adblocker and anti-surveillance browser out there randomizes your fingerprint.
which one
Brave
“Just” remove a random 2.5% of the fonts, a different random set per request (context).
Just have everyone agree on a set of fonts to report and report those.
That would solve the anonymity problem but not the “obscure when requests are duplicates” problem
A browser extension that limits webpages to default Windows fonts only would eliminate that factor from contributing to identification without flagging it as suspicious. A slightly more robust version could frequently cycle between multiple subsets of default Windows fonts. Say Windows comes with 100 fonts. So you could have thousands of configurations with different subsets of those.
That’s not how IP addresses work.
It does if it reports the URL to click home somewhere and users can opt in to pull the list to auto click.
It would DDoS the ad servers. Muwhahahaa
Yes. That’s just what I want. An extension sending all ads served to me to a central location, so my fingerprint can be very easily indexed and stored on a definitely never hacked, leaked, or sold database.
And it would totally never get abused or hit a false positive.
Have it form connections to all the other browsers using the extension and they all send a click.
now you’ve broken the law by creating a botnet.
peer networks are not illegal if the peers are consenting members.
Naw, it’s an MMORPG.
Is the botnet itself breaking the law or is breaking the law with a botnet breaking the law?
I’m pretty sure it’s not a botnet until it’s used as one or the intent of it is to be used in the same way a botnet is used.
Okay okay, how about a counter that is updated with each user clicking on an ad, and the client can decide what they want to do with that information, totally not a botnet right?
“He who save his country does not violate the law” 😏
It just changes the user agent instead…
maybe we can setup a botnet to poison advertiser data.
click all the ads, all over the planet!
Why are you people so concerned about “the data?” Talk about missing the forest for the trees.
This is an effective tool to charge advertisers money without having their ads shoved in our faces. It directly undermines the integrity of the digital advertising ecosystem, and you people are obsessed with “privacy” because your priorities have been decided for you by your oppressors.
I liked your post ❤️
what oppressors want me to worry about privacy? what planet are they in?
those people are literally using it to sell us fascism…
Feed it SQL injections?
Nothing is random
In bot cases like this you would have a proxy list that it “randomly” picks from
No, he means that’s literally not how IP addresses work. It’s not about “nothing being random.”
You don’t just “pick an IP address” from a list lmao and send it as though it’s not your actual IP. You would need to literally connect to a proxy and send the request through that proxy in order for ads to see an IP different than you own.
My god, are you people trolls or just the next generation taking hold? The dumbing down of Western society is in full force.
You would need to literally connect to a proxy and send the request through that proxy in order for ads to see an IP different than you own.
Yes that is what was proposed, you’re the only one who seems unclear on it
Where is it being proposed?
What if we use a Visual Basic UI to hack the IP address by netmask?
Is it from this? https://youtu.be/hkDD03yeLnU
Yes, but this only works if you connect your VPN via 3 block chain proxies.
Make sure you’re behind a 54mghz ram modem firewall
Totally doable if this was a distributed service.
ok not randomly generated, but you know
You can fake your IP. There isnt really any authentication at the IP level. Just make a packet and overwite the IP field.
Edit: I was corrected. The TCP handshake requires you to have a valid IP you can respond from. So even though you can fake your IP, you can’t use that to talk to most websites.
You need a TCP handshake prior to sending any http payload.
Oh yeah. Forgot about that.
Just make a packet and overwite the IP field.
I can tell I’m getting old by the amount of proudly-dumb shit I keep reading.
It’s only going to get worse. Sigh.
I misremembered my internet class. Sucks that it made ya feel bad.
Edit: and you can put whatever you want as your source IP at the IP level. Though idk how modern security deals with that. I know I was taught that that was a way to DoS attack, so I imagine it’s protected against.
If you just do it on your own computer, the packet will be already dropped by your own gateway. You can fake whichever address in your local subnet, but those are very likely remapped anyway in your gw to the one given by your ISP.
If you would have access to the switch port used by your ISP in the Internet exchange point (IX), you would have more liberties in choosing the IP.
That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard, you’d have to be deranged to want an extension clicking random shit.
Edit: I’ve actually read it now and while not so bad, I still wouldn’t use this on a computer that has my stuff on it.
it doesn’t actually click on stuff. it “clicks” so that the advertisers’ and your digital footprint’s statistics get messed up, but you never see the results of the clicking, nothing pops up, nothing gets downloaded
It also adds noise to the site metrics and recommendation algorithm making them less valuable overall.
It’s like the application that will watermark images with digital noise designed to throw off AI training that uses that image.
You’re no longer a user who is able to be profiled (because you ‘like’ things completely at random). If everyone was using a plugin like this then advertisers wouldn’t be able to serve targeted content because they wouldn’t know what content types work best for each user because every user clicks ads randomly and so there is no detectable signal, just noise.
You get the same effect, but reduced, if less people are using it.
In addition, if half of the users on a website are using adblockers and suddenly those users start clicking ads, then it costs twice as much to advertise while not providing any additional customers which makes spending money on web advertisement less attractive.
