5+1 reasons you need an ad blocker
An ad blocker is not just about blocking ads. It has much more to offer. Let's have a look at the reasons why you need an ad blocker in your life.
1. Faster Web
Ads are numerous and huge. They include videos, big pictures, animated elements. Ads take time to be requested from ad servers and downloaded to a page. You can save this time and enjoy clean and simple web pages with only useful content.
Behind ads, there is a wide ecosystem of ad networks, analytics software, marketing data trackers, targeting technologies and what-not. An ad blocker prevents all this stuff from abusing your device and traffic.
2. Clearer head
Ads overload your perception and steal your attention from the things that are important. They distract you and exhaust your cognitive resources. They try to outvoice one another, never bothering if you need to keep your mind focused on a text.
3. Safer kids
Research shows that kids don’t differ ads from other types of content, rarely perceive advertising promises critically, and tend to develop bad habits under the influence of brands.
4. Disarmed cybercriminals
Ads can be a direct menace to your purse and device. Malvertising is a practice of contaminating ads with viruses, trojans, spyware, ransomware and other types of malicious software. Often you don’t even need to click such an ad to become a victim of hackers.
5. Disappointed spies
We all have heard that privacy matters, but many of us think that there is no harm in letting advertisers know a thing or two about us. Sex, age, hobbies — why not, at least we won’t see ads for goods that don’t fit us.
Unfortunately, the price for relevant ads is too high to pay (and are they actually so relevant, by the way?).
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First, advertisers are greedy and want to know ALL about you. Are you ready to be transparent to a whopping crowd of people just for the sake of their profits? Besides, they often cheat, not telling you (although they must) everything about what data is gathered and how it is used.
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Second, as in Miranda warning, “everything you say can (and will be) be used against you”. Information about your health could be used to manipulate your fears, information about your eating habits can add up to your insurance price, knowledge about your earnings can make prices in web stores higher personally for you.
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Third, advertisers can sell your data or just lose it — in favour to whoever finds. Hackers, foreign intelligence, you name it.
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After all, your personal data is a valuable asset, you should not just give it for free.
Not just ads
Advertising is not the only problem of the Internet, it is actually full of traps and trouble. For example, your computer can be used for mining cryptocurrencies without asking for your permission. A good ad blocker will warn you about this activity and help prevent it if you choose.
New ways of making money and doing business online are invented every day, and not all of them user-friendly, honest, or respectable. Ad blocker developers keep in touch with technology trends and new inventions and protect their users from the dubious ones.
