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Ad blockers and pop-up blockers. The best (and worst) ad blockers (updated). Browser ad blockers

Adblock is a free add-on for popular browsers designed to block annoying and distracting (and in cases with slow internet using precious traffic) banner ads and messages. The open source utility is distributed and functions perfectly on all mobile and stationary platforms. The essence of the work of AdBlock 2019 is to create and use filters, which indicate what content on which sites should be blocked and what should be skipped. Without user intervention, the application will use rules and filters from an online database hosted on a remote server. If changes are made to the rules of the utility, the filters take effect immediately, and the result of their work will be visible after opening or refreshing the page.

Of the distinctive features of AdBlock for Windows 7, 8, 10, it is worth mentioning its automatic update in case of release new version without user intervention. The latest version of AdBlock 2019, which is very pleasing, does not display an empty frame or a white square in place of some blocked ones advertisements due to blocking the code of the entire page element. Using a browser with the add-on installed, working on the Internet will become more enjoyable and simpler, pages will start loading faster, the user will no longer be distracted by various flash videos, pop-up windows, constantly opening tabs and even flv videos. The developers have endowed free AdBlock on the computer with the functions of hiding the utility icon and a switchable counter of the number of blocked elements.

You can download the latest version of AdBlock for your browser using one of the direct links located a little below.

Version: 3.46.0

Program status: Free of charge

The size: 0.82 Mb

Developer: Adblock

System: Google chrome| Yandex Browser | Mozilla | Opera

Russian language: Yes

Update from: 2019-05-06

Adguard - # 1 protected in 2019:

Starting with version 14.2, Yandex Browser has received a catalog of recommended add-ons, where you can find, download, and install useful improvements. In particular, there are also various ad blockers that allow you to block banners, pop-ups and other annoying elements.

Where to download Adblock for Yandex.browser and how to install it?

In order to download and install an ad blocker in the Yandex browser, you must do the following:

  • Open your browser and click on the settings menu icon. We select "Add-ons".
  • Select the "Add-ons" tab and go down. Here you need to click on the link "Add-ons catalog for Yandex.Browser".

  • In the search box, enter "Adblock".

  • You may not find "Adblock" in its pure form. However, there is "Adblock Cash" here. This is the same ad blocker whose developers promise rewards for using it. In fact, you will get nothing, and the add-on will block ads.
  • Installing "Adblock Cash" is quite simple. You need to click "Add to Yandex Browser".

  • Then click "Install extension" again.

If you want to install an adblock close to the interface, then "Adblock Plus" is perfect for this purpose. To download and install it, follow these steps:

  • Follow the link to the product page.
  • Select your browser type (there are small icons under the button) and click "Install".

  • Then click "Install extension" again.

  • Restart the browser for the changes to take effect. The extension icon will be located in the upper right corner.

How to set up Adblock Plus in Yandex Browser?

A new tab will open. 4 sections of settings will be available here:

  • Filter list;
  • Personal filters;
  • List of extended domains;
  • General.

By default, the first section is marked "RuAdList + EasyList". However, a second mark needs to be put as well. The more filters are included, the less likely it is that some banner will be able to crawl onto the page.

Also, if some unobtrusive advertising does not bother you, then you can leave it. To do this, you must put the appropriate mark.

In the "Personal Filters" tab, you can add your own filter. How to do it? Let's look at a simple example .. The banner address will be https: //site/ads/banner124.gif, where 124 is the banner number. However, every time the page is loaded, the banner number will change and it is impossible to use this address as a filter .. gif, where * are all banners. This filter will block ads. But do not enter other characters, since in addition to advertising, you can block the materials on the site themselves. Insert this filter into the line and press "Add filter".

In the "List of allowed domains" (not sites) tab, you can add a specific resource using a special button by selecting address bar and clicking on the Adblock icon.

In the "General" tab, we leave everything unchanged, since all marks are responsible for statistics and display of instruments.

Disabling ad blocker using Adblock Plus as an example

To disable any extension in Yandex Browser, just select "Add-ons" from the menu.

After that, in the list of add-ons, you need to find an ad blocker or another extension and check the "Disable" checkbox.

It is not uncommon for anyone who uses the Internet to experience inconvenience caused by advertisements and pop-ups in.

It doesn't matter if you are an advanced Internet user or just like to chat with friends on the Internet after work, find an apple strudel recipe, but advertising windows get in the way you get what you need quickly and easily. Accelerating the Internet by increasing traffic is useless and fruitless.

Browser extension Adblock

Adblock - browser extension to protect you from intrusive advertising while working on the network, the bonus of this program is the ability to work with many browsers :, and others.

Chrome app

Firefox app

Adblock benefits and features

But in order to protect your data while working on the Internet, completely get rid of ads, including in video format, do not see ads in the applications installed on your PC, and also exclude the possibility of "reading" your search queries and how consequence, to protect against viral advertising, you need more advanced protection. This task will be successfully completed Adblock app.

Blocking video ads

For the Adblock app, blocking pop-up ads, even video ads, is not a problem. The browser extension is not able to distinguish ordinary videos from advertising on Youtube, which means that it is not able to make the loading of videos on this site faster.

Adblock app can read and block video ads, which significantly speeds up the download of the necessary videos.

Benefits of working with Adguard

You can read detailed information about the application and see its benefits. Like regular browser extensions, Adblock blocks requests for advertising materials, and also uses CSS to render sites in order to hide elements that the application has blocked.

If you are interested not only in blocking ads, but also in more secure Internet surfing and networking, then you just need to additionally download the Adguard application.


This application is subject not only blocking pop-ups in firefox and yandex, but also an ad filter that starts working even before the page opens. This program from pop-up ads is able to remove windows with advertisements and applications on your computer.

You can also remove pop-ups using browser extension Adblock Plus 2019, but Adguard can give you more - protection from malicious sites, as well as getting rid of remote monitoring of your computer or mobile device, which guarantees you reliable protection of your personal data.

Parental control

Take care not only to protect your personal data, but also to protect children while they are on the Internet. Advertising windows pop up - it's not so bad, children's safety on the Internet is something worth thinking about. Adguard app will easily solve this situation - function " Parental control» will hide unwanted information.

In addition to all the attached pluses - a simple and intuitive application interface.

Adblock for other operating systems

We learned how to remove pop-up ads for opera, chrome and any other browser. But software Windows Is not the only platform this application works with. How to remove a pop-up window when working on the Internet and applications on operating systems Mac, iOS and Android?

Filtering ads when working on the Internet and in mobile applications and games, protection of personal data, speeding up the work of web pages and applications - and many more excellent features that Adguard provides to its users.

Hello! Nowadays, the problem of viruses is not very acute - most users already generally understand what can be opened and what is highly discouraged ... and modern Windows 10 is already less vulnerable to malware. And what do most users use a computer for? - surfing the Internet and watching movies. But with browsers, not everything is so simple, so the issue of blocking ads in a browser is more relevant than ever.

If you are interested in ad blocking ... or you started to notice ads where they never were (and even worse if ads are already popping up in the browser), then I can tell you with confidence - you are not alone, but I will try to explain to you how to get rid of this ailment.

How to block ads in the browser - simple steps to a clean internet

  • Ads that are deliberately installed by the site owner are the most common and easiest way to block ads.
  • Crawling, maddening advertising on all sites ... pop-ups, spontaneous opening of the browser, various casinos and other nonsense - it is much more difficult to treat, but really (the problem is that ads are shown to you specifically on your computer)

Originally I want to show basic setting blocking ads in the browser (if this does not help, then you most likely have ad modules or as they are called AdWare).

It is quite simple to recognize AdWare - it is a pop-up flashy advertisement in the browser on all pages (for example, a volcano casino may be advertised on yandex, or a browser with an advertisement may open spontaneously).

It is clear that this is not normal ... so I want to tell you about the method of blocking Yandex Browser (now I use it myself and can recommend it to you). In the instructions, we will consider universal options that are suitable even for Internet Explorer or EDGE. Let's take a look at both paid and free extensions - don't switch, it will be interesting!

How to remove ads in Yandex browser

You know what I like about the Yandex browser? - it contains a lot of useful things for a Russian-speaking user. In addition, there is a built-in ability to filter ads using a third-party AdGuard service. (I previously used AdBlock Plus, but after switching from Firefox to Ya Browser, there is no point in installing a third-party extension)... Turning on this extension is elementary - open the menu and go to "Add-ons" ... well, enable the "Adguard" extension.

By default, ads from Yandex and Google will not be blocked (and there are normal ads, sometimes even useful ones) - it is up to you to disable it or not. On my own behalf, I want to add that sometimes this is the only way for the author of a resource to make money ... after all, you have to pay for hosting, spend time writing posts like this one. Well, monetization is a great motivator to develop and fill your resource.

Well, it was a small lyrical digression - you can go to the extension settings and disable the "Allow search advertising and own site promotions" item. Thus, you completely disable all advertisements known to the extension on sites.

ADGUARD is a great ad blocker for any browser

Since we are talking about ad blocking, it would be simply a crime not to talk about the wonderful AdGuard app. What if I told you that you can block ads not only in the browser, but also in various applications where is it often found? Skype, Viber, uTorrent - all these programs are popular and constantly annoying with ads, but AdGuard will automatically remove them all. You can download it on the official website ...

AdGuard deserves a separate note, which I plan to write in the future, but for now, a small overview of the possibilities

Installation, as elsewhere, did not come up with anything new ... however, I would advise not to install the recommended products (well, if we want, we will install it ourselves, I do not like this obsession)

What to tell about the best application to block ads on your computer? Many people are looking for ways to disable ads on Skype or torrent, dig into the code, edit something there - this is all real and tested in practice ... but you can just install AdGuard and it will automatically block ads in all popular applications - beauty, isn't it ?!

The Parental Control function seemed to be useful. I don't know what filters it works with - but the trick is not in blocking porn sites and other bad resources ... but in the impossibility even to find them in the search.

But of course, not without drawbacks - the application is paid, but its price does not exceed the cost of pizza ... support the developers, do not go to torrents! And do not forget - the AdGuard application serves to block ads, it will not help against viruses. You can use a good antivirus for free against any evil spirits.

How to remove ads in Google Chrome and other browsers

Now let's move on to the most easy way get rid of ads in the browser - I used this extension until I switched to Yandex Browser with the AdGuard extension. Suitable for any browser (well, almost all known to me are supported) - just go to the official site of the extension ...

I'll tell you on the example of Google Chrome (but everything is the same for any other - be it Firefox or Opera) - find the largest button "Install for YOUR_BROWSER". Agree with the installation of the extension and restart your web browser - the lion's share of advertising on sites will disappear.

How do I remove ads in my browser? - Choosing the best

If your browser ad pops up all the time, and all of the above methods did not correct the situation, then you have a high probability of a malicious program, browser extension or system settings changed on your computer. All the problems of this infection - they are not seen by antiviruses, in fact it does not harm the computer ... but the user enrages. Let's start with the dismantling of pop-up ads in the browser.

How to remove pop-up ads automatically

With the spread of this infection, it is not surprising that gradually entire companies began to appear that produce applications to combat these ad ransomware. Thanks to them, most ad inserts are treated in automatic mode and require virtually no user intervention - I highly recommend using them for you.

AdwCleaner is an easy way to remove ads from your computer

In order not to strain you especially and not to hammer your head in places in the Windows system that are obscure to an ordinary user, I suggest that you initially try to remove pop-up ads in the browser in automatic mode. There are many software products to uninstall AdWare, however my experience tells me to stick with AdwCleaner - in my opinion the best solution is to remove all known extensions from any browser.

Download only from ! OFFICIAL site and nowhere else! After starting the application, click "Scan" and wait for the end of the search for harmful programs ... check that there is nothing superfluous in the results and click clean - check after reboot.

Please note that AdvCliner also considers all programs from Mail.RU to be malicious. If you are using any Mail Agent, do not forget to remove it from the cleanup list.

HitmanPro - good way remove pop-up ads in the browser

A small utility from Malwarebytes Hitman Pro will find most of the malware on your computer and can remove them. The application is paid, but with a test period - it will be more useful for us for a one-time cleanup. As usual - download from the official website of the program.

In order not to install the program on your computer - use the item "I'm going to scan the system only once". In this case, we will immediately start scanning. operating system to unwanted programs.

As you can see, malicious programs were found in our system (in our example, this is a system activator, but it will work as an example) - just click "Next" to clean the found threats.

Remember I wrote that the application is paid? - so, to clean up the system, you can activate a free license ... click the appropriate button and specify email to issue you a temporary license.

After cleaning, you should restart your computer and check whether our problem with pop-up advertising inserts has been resolved or not.

Removed pop-up ads in the browser - Internet does not work

An unpleasant situation happens - you removed pop-up windows and ads in the browser and now the Internet does not work. The browser reports the inability to connect to the proxy server. The problem is quite common, but it has an elementary solution.

Most likely, the left DNS server was used, and since we removed the malicious application - the use of DNS data turned out to be impossible and useless - you just need to reset the settings to standard

To solve the problem with the error "Cannot connect to the proxy server", we need to go to the "Control Panel", open the "Network and Internet" section and in the "Browser Properties" category, select "Manage browser settings".

Check that the "Use a proxy server for local connections" checkbox is unchecked and the "Automatic detection of parameters" item is active

If the actions taken did not give the desired result - write in the comments, we will try to figure out the problem together.

How to remove pop-up ads in your browser manually

If all the above methods to get rid of viral ads in the browser did not help, then there are extreme measures left - we will try to fix the situation manually.

Task Scheduler - if an advertisement pops up in the browser

The 2017 trend is not a new frameless iPhone, but the problem of users who periodically pop up ads in their browser ... and no program sees them. For the first time I met such a variety at the end of 2016. (and to be honest, for a very long time I could not understand what the problem was)... The situation is as follows - an advertising site was periodically opened, even if the browser was closed.

As it turned out, the malware used the task scheduler and simply periodically launched a task - launch the browser at the required time interval and open the site it needed (! Ingeniously).

To improve the health of our system - open the task scheduler and remove it from there ...

Open the Start menu and type "Task Scheduler" - find it in the search list and open it. Alternative option - press WIN + R on your keyboard and type taskschd.msc

In one of the tasks, you will probably see the path to the browser with a postscript in the form of a site that constantly opens with you - it should be deleted (right-click on the task - delete). There are situations when different sites open all the time - in this case, one site opens, and then redirects to one of many (you just don't have time to notice it) - just delete the dubious tasks with postscripts to the path to the browser file.

What to do if an advertisement appears in the browser? - Disable extensions

You can clear your browser from ads and pop-ups simply by disabling the bad extension. Not so long ago I installed a browser add-on that allowed me to watch torrents online ... everything was great until I noticed - ads appeared where they had never been. Unfortunately, I did not notice this right away, and therefore the solitaire did not work out right away - it helped that the extension could not be installed in another browser and there was no left advertisement there.

I just turned off the browser add-on and the ads were gone. Try it and you will go to the list of extensions:

  • For Yandex Browser, this is Settings> Add-ons (in the same place where you enabled AdGuard)
  • For Google Chrome - Settings> More Tools> Extensions

Disable all extensions one by one until ads stop appearing. Thus, you will identify a malicious extension - it must be removed and forgotten about it forever.

Unfortunately, this point is often ignored, but it is one of the most common. No one can be trusted ... there are often cases in which the usual expansion begins to show us all nasty things. We trust him, why should we turn it off and check it ?! We will search in the place where it does not exist ... but until the last moment we will not try to just turn it off for a minute and check.

Hosts file - the reason for advertising in the browser

Many adware use the Windows hosts file for displaying ads. Currently, it is practically not used by adware - usually left google addresses are written there or social networks are replaced.

To correct hosts file you can use notepad (which, by the way, needs to be opened as administrator, otherwise you won't be able to save changes in it). It is necessary to delete all lines that are below the lines starting with a hash.

Why are ads popping up in the browser? - Edit shortcuts

If, after completing all the above steps, advertising is launched only when the browser itself is launched, then it is time to pay attention to the program shortcuts. In the properties of the shortcut, delete everything that is outside the quotation marks (as a rule, this is the address of an annoying site) ... then create new shortcuts for the browser.

This method is outrageously simple, but many people overlook it. In my practice, this type of pop-up ad is very common - so do not underestimate it.

Conclusions on pop-up ads in the browser and their blocking

Constantly pop-up ads in the browser can be very annoying, so be careful when installing different applications and try to use official download sites in order to minify the opportunity to pick up something unusual, but extremely unpleasant.

I hope this small instruction turned out to be useful for you (and it is really small - I have described only a small part of the problem areas, but they are the most common) and you were able to defeat ads in the browser. If something does not work out - write in the comments, we will figure it out together!

The Internet is replete with advertising, the display methods of which are becoming more and more aggressive. Animated GIFs and flash, separate frames and pop-ups are still flowers. Phishing redirects, Trojans, and hidden miners that mine cryptocurrencies when they visit websites are increasingly common. Browser extensions help protect the user from them, but not all blockers turned out to be honest and effective.

In today's article we will talk about the evolution of ad blockers, how and how they make money. We will choose the best ad blocker and fight hidden mining and content blockers.

How to block ads and malicious content

Modern web development tools help not only to create cool web services, but also not completely enrich themselves by legal means... Intrusive advertising, changing browser settings, JS miners hidden in the code of the pages - all these are the consequences of the endless pursuit of profit.

To combat this on the user's side, you can use filtering. In the simplest case, known resources with unfair advertising, phishing sites and other network junk are simply added to the hosts file, where they are hard-coded to redirect to a local host instead of a remote IP address with a dubious reputation.

The advantage of this method is that it is independent of the browser being used. Localhost is one for all programs and can be used on any modern operating system. For example, the open source AdAway program allows you to get rid of ads from a rooted device with Android 4.1 and newer.

Another popular option is to use browser extensions that filter content. Among such ad fighters, AdBlock and its analogues have become very popular.

The most annoying ads began to be filtered out at the browser level. By default, Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge block pop-ups. Also, in browsers, they began to block Flash a long time ago, since they are often used to track user activity, and the Flash Player itself is replete with security holes.

Since version 53, Chrome first tries to load the non-Flash version of the page, and other developers have done the same. Safari, starting in version 11, disallows automatic playback of videos on the page. And such functions are becoming more common. Therefore, before installing any blocker, open the settings of your browser. Some of the annoying nonsense can be hidden with built-in tools.

Why AdBlock isn't the best ad blocker

Many people confuse AdBlock and Adblock Plus, considering the second advanced version of the first. In reality, the history of their creation is much more complicated. Here is how it was…

The first version of an extension called AdBlock for Firefox was written by Henrik Aasted Sørensen in 2002. As you might guess, it only worked in Firefox. Due to the limitations of the browser engine, AdBlock for Firefox struggled poorly with ad insertions, and the interface was rather poor. A couple of years later, a fork of Adblock Plus appeared, in which a lot was improved. In part because of this, development of the original AdBlock for Firefox stalled in 2006.

After a three-year lull, another developer, Michael Gundlach, used the developments of Adblock Plus, took the name of the original AdBlock project and released his own version of the ad blocker in 2009.

The new AdBlock is a fork of a fork that has little in common with its parent of the same name. It was written as an extension for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Edge. Among the advantages of this add-on are versatility, a completely redesigned interface and the ability to use Adblock Plus lists that are the same format. However, not all innovations were to the liking of users and site owners.


Echo of Moscow website. Display without blockers

Do you see the difference? I can't see it either, but the AdBlock counter shows that it is there!

At the same time, on the RenTV website (yes, we have specially selected the most "delicious" pages) the picture is different. If you go to it without AdBlock, you can get trauma. There will be so many ads that it will not fit in one screenshot.

It is worth turning on AdBlock, as whole ribbons are cut out and the page shrinks vertically at times, but some of the ads still remain.


Ad blockers as a source of income

Advertising is associated with millions of budgets, and a natural question arises: why do people write clones of AdBlock, and then spend years supporting these projects? It is unlikely that the authors are driven exclusively by altruistic considerations. Blocking ads can simply be more profitable than showing them. Quora AdBlock users estimated that AdBlock brought in between $ 6 million and $ 25 million annually through voluntary donations to support the developer.


Donation collection

How much was actually collected according to the donation scheme for freemium is not officially reported. However, technically, shadow methods of monetization are also possible here. For example, the new AdBlock is able not only to block ads, but to replace cut banners with anything. In 2012, Gundlach began replacing them with photographs of smiling cats (this experiment was explained as a prolonged April Fools' rally), and in 2016, instead of banners, links to articles about Snowden and other Amnesty International propaganda appeared. As they say, your ad could be here.

Gundlach is currently retiring from development, with the development of AdBlock being led by Gabriel Cubbage and Antoine Boegler. The details of this deal were not officially announced, but talks about selling AdBlock for an impressive amount have been going on since 2015. At the same time, AdBlock uses the labor of volunteers. Dozens of people continue to translate for free and help improve the product.

Adblock Plus ad blocker

Today, the Adblock Plus extension is available for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Edge browsers. It is one of the most popular ad blockers with over 100 million downloads. It can selectively filter ads (including videos), disable social media buttons, prevent switching to phishing sites, and protect users from tracking through counters and ad units. However, it also asks for an impressive set of permissions. Much more than analogs.


Allow Adblock Plus all

Adblock Plus is distributed free of charge under the GPLv3 license, but this does not mean that it is not profitable for its owners. It's just that the approaches to monetization of the developers of this fork are slightly different.

Created to promote the ad blocker, Eyeo relies on whitelisting. They are enabled in the default settings and contain rules to allow "some unobtrusive ads" to be shown.

Since 2011, Eyeo has been interacting with advertisers through the AAP - Acceptable Ads Platform. "Acceptable" ads can also appear in place of the clipped "invalid" ads.

Adblock Plus developers openly enter into contracts with ad networks who want to whitelist their content. Officially, they must be screened to ensure that their ads meet the admissibility criteria, but these criteria are determined by Eyeo itself. Of course, frankly intrusive advertising is unlikely to be moderated, even for a large reward. A long-term reputation trite is more expensive than a one-time profit.

Some website owners view the practice of selectively blocking ads and replacing them with the "correct" one as an unfair competition. Instead of participating in the AAP program, they sue and sometimes even win. For example, the German publishing house Axel Springer obtained through the courts the free addition of its magazines to the Adblock Plus whitelist.

In our test, Adblock Plus showed itself on par with other participants, regularly cutting out ads. However, some sites simply refused to load until we turn it off.


No entry with Adblock Plus!

How filter lists are compiled

All blockers use open lists of unsafe sites and annoying advertising sources. They are updated by different organizations, each of which is guided by its own criteria for a ban.

Typically, a site or its individual component receives a "black mark" after users' complaints about finished advertising or fraud. A site is considered potentially dangerous when it is targeted by a cloud-based anti-virus scan system. For example, such as Google Safebrowsing or Norton Safe Web.

List of popular blacklists with their brief description available. They overlap, so before using them you need to combine them, clearing them from duplicate records. AdAway and modern blockers do this automatically. Any number of lists can be used - the main thing is that their format matches.

It is much more important to consider regional features... For example, it is unlikely that users from Russia will be relevant to lists of annoying advertisements that bother web surfers in Argentina. In practice, it turns out to be more effective to use default regional lists and add your own individual filters to them, than to try to immediately fasten as many ready-made ones as possible.

Alternatives to AdBlock blocker

In addition to the old-new AdBlock and its fork with the Plus postscript, there are a lot of other ad blockers, but mostly these are highly specialized add-ons or just crafts that are much inferior in functionality. There are, however, pleasant exceptions.

UBlock Origin ad blocker

In my opinion, Raymond Hill's uBlock Origin deserves a special mention. It uses more filters, but manages to use fewer system resources than Adblock Plus. Here are the developer's own tests to prove the quality of the code.

uBlock Origin is highly configurable. I have not seen more detailed settings in any other ad blocker. Separate lists are loaded with rules for filtering common and annoying ads, fraudulent and malicious sites, regional and universal lists. Additional lists also block the tracking components of sites, taking care of privacy.


Large selection of subscriptions

In addition, uBlock Origin allows you to individually configure the disabling of pop-ups, blocking large media downloads to reduce traffic, and the use of "cosmetic filters". In fact, these are style sheets, without which empty rectangles would be displayed instead of the cut elements. They re-type the page on the fly, making it more compact by moving the main content to the place of the remote ad. Similar features are found in other ad blockers, but in my experience with uBlock Origin it works best.

It is easy to set your own settings for each site, it is not difficult to disable uBlock Origin completely or selectively - for individual pages of the site. It is even easier to allow or deny access to certain third-party sites in it. To do this, just click on the list of blocked elements on the current page.


Setting rules on the fly

UBlock Origin also has a whitelist. By default, add-on sources and a behind-the-scene component are added to it. This is how uBlock marks all HTTP requests that cannot be associated with a specific browser tab. These requests include automatic updates of the browser itself and its add-ons, search suggestion systems, and other service traffic.

If uBlock Origin missed ads or you just do not want to see some typical fragment of a web page, then you can set your own blocking rule. To do this, you need to go into the mode of overwriting elements and click on what you did not like.


Wipe mode

Thus, I easily removed messages and video inserts on sites - not advertising, but just distracting.


Selecting an item to remove

The advanced uBlock settings are available after checking the "I'm an advanced user" checkbox. After that, the dynamic content filtering mode is turned on, which is aimed primarily at blocking cross-site requests for the sake of increasing privacy and security.


uBlock Origin - settings for advanced users

Since version 1.1.0.0 uBlock Origin supports cloud sync settings via Firefox Sync or Google account. With its help, all filtering rules configured on one device can be easily exported to others. You can also use the settings backup function for these purposes.


Save filtering settings

AdGuard ad blocker

Before there were any browser extensions, I used the AtGuard software firewall. In the nineties, on dial-up connection, it was a real lifesaver, as it effectively reduced the volume of traffic. AtGuard did not specifically deal with advertising, but was able to "freeze" GIF animation, block scripts and ActiveX components. This not only added comfort, but also greatly helped to avoid infection.

Much has changed since then, and today there are two different products under the similar name AdGuard: a free browser add-on by Andrey Meshkov and a paid cross-platform firewall created by his own company AdGuard Software.

In this article, we will look at the "AdGuard Anti-Banner" browser extension. It is free and open source. In addition to regular and intrusive advertising, Anti-Banner is able to block advertising videos on YouTube and other sites, as well as social media widgets.

AdGuard Anti-Banner is also interesting because it not only cuts ads, but also prevents the installation of Spyware and Adware. At the same time, he himself advertises the full version of AdGuard (a separate application), whose default installer tries to stuff the system with dubious partner software - in particular, Yandex. I reflexively unchecked the checkboxes before taking the screenshot.
A little "Yandex" to the heap

Additionally, "AdGuard Anti-Banner" blocks almost all systems for tracking user actions on the Internet and checks the visited sites for malware and phishing.


It has a whitelist, and by default it is empty. There is a funny "invert whitelist" function in the settings. Then advertising will be allowed everywhere, except for the marked sites.

In general, I have a very pleasant impression of AdGuard Anti-Banner, but purely subjectively, using uBlock Origin seemed much more convenient.

Ad blockers vs hidden miners.

IN recent times on many sites (JS miners) have appeared, which are secretly launched when visiting pages, regardless of user actions. Moreover, in most cases it turned out to be a surprise for site owners as well. Someone quietly infected popular web pages and forced them to mine cryptocurrency on all computers and mobile devices of visitors.

Since September 2017, Adblock Plus has added a feature to prohibit hidden mining scripts. Technically, this is just another filter like * coinhive.min.js, so you can manually turn any custom ad blocker into an anti-miner. Moreover, in addition to Coinhive, there are many other scripts for online mining. A list of them can be found in the description of add-ons such as Mining Blocker or NoMiner.

PayWall: Disable your ad blocker or leave

Surely you have often seen requests to disable AdBlock and its analogs on different sites. At some point, these requests turned into demands. Now some web pages hide their content until you add them to the whitelist. This phenomenon is called adwall by analogy with paywall - restricting the display of content only to paid subscribers.

Take forbes.com for example. If you go to it without blockers, then ads will start to crawl out even during loading. Further, it will be displayed on each page in priority places. For example, at the top, shifting the titles of the articles.

If you have some kind of blocker installed, then most likely you will simply be blocked from viewing the site. This behavior is increasingly common on major Western sites, especially those related to finance and business. The expectation is that a decent person who for some reason has Adblock Plus will just add the site to the whitelist and move on.

Blocker for ad blockers

A separate IsraBlock extension hides the requirement to disable AdBlock and its analogues from web pages.


An example of how IsraBlock works

The latest version of IsraBlock 0.0.35 works much better in Chrome than Firefox. While the Chrome version allows you to set advanced settings, the Firefox add-on has no settings at all.

IsraBlock is currently on hold, but it is still working properly.


What is the answer to the main question? 42!

In our test, uBlock Origin and AdGuard Anti-Banner easily overcame the adwall on Forbes.com. There were no requirements to disable AdBlock when visiting this site with them, and advertising elements were neatly cut from the content of the page.


Forbes website when visited with AdGuard