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!
Couple of issues I’m wondering about…
First, wouldn’t clicking on everything just make you easier to track?
Second, how much bandwidth would all this use?
Also wouldn’t this be directing a ton of money to google? (or I guess any other ad provider)
The advertisers are paying for the opportunity either way. Clicks cost them more money than just displaying the ad. Useless clicks cost them money for nothing.
The advertisers could be paying based on interactions and/or their rates could be negotiated around interaction, so unless a sizeable number of people use this it would be giving money to Goog
No, because it devalues their click through, as no sales will result from those clicks.
It’s kinda like printing money, there’s more of it, but the overall value hasn’t increased.
In the short term, I would think so.
In the long run, it makes it less appealing for companies to advertise, because they would have larger costs while having less sales. That, in return, hurts Google as advertisers don’t want to pay as much anymore. If 80% of all users used this extension, advertisers would have to pay more than ever, while having only 20% of all users can be reached (simplified, of course).
Or in short, it’s designed to hurt the system as a whole, not specific companies.
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.
If you’re still using chrome at this point that’s on you.
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.
Or a Chrome derivative
I was actually curious about this as we’re forced to use Edge or.Chrome at work.
The solution is simple. Chrome ditches manifest v2? Ditch Chrome.
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.
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.
Interesting, was wondering about this. This would also “help” the websites with more ad income right?
if thats true, brb setting up a website and a bot farm
Careful: that then enters the world of ad fraud, which randos like us doing the clicking isn’t considered as.
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”.
I’ve used this for a while. Also, I love filling out corpo surveys because I feed them bad data. It’s the little acts of chaos.
Another great extension:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/fake-data-haterapps/
If they want real information, they can pay me, and even then, well… :) Don’t work for free.
Ha, this is as hilarious as it is creative. Interesting find; got any more?
Depends on the situation really, it makes me feel the joy of a naughty child. Roll with it. Where you can feed people bad data, do it. Where you cannot, strip it and block it. Obtusify and randomise how your computer connects to the internet (browser spoofs, VPNs, SPN, etc.), use containers (Firefox), support others breaking rules (https://snowflake.torproject.org/), contain your applications (https://safing.io/), spoof things like location etc. This is my little everyday act of anarchism. If people want to fight back against this bullshit, they should learn to stop complying with the folks putting everyone and everything in boxes. People are so used to mindlessly complying. It’s my nerdy kind of fun. Make your phone & computer a poisoned apple when you have time.
Dang, I had no idea of Portmaster! I wish I talked to you years ago and will check these out, thanks, and I fully agree with your stance as well.
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.
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 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.
This would just give money to the advertisers.
Can’t tell if 4/1 gag or not! Brilliant!
Oops, lol, I forgot about the date. This has existed for years.
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.
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
What makes you think uBlock is safe without checking relevant code sections?
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.
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.
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.
Collateral damage to advertisers? Sounds like a feature, not a bug.
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.
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.
To each their own. I’m in your boat too, I think.
