As was mentioned on a few message boards, I think educating users is a good idea. its scarey that this software can be running on peoples computers without them knowing it!

For many users, it is not the visual clutter that advertisements cause that is the main problem. Rather, it is the privacy issues that come from (particularly) the large advertising/tracking companies. Some of these companies which for many years claimed that the information was not personally identifiable, later purchased extensive personal databases which they merged with their own. This made the profiles that they had built up over many years of trust instantly become personally identifiable. An independent website operator may, for now, do nothing more than deliver ads. However there is no way that this can be guaranteed into the future.

A competent user can make the choice to invest their time and effort to make use of more adjustable tools to pick and choose which advertisements to block and which to allow through.

Not all internet users are computer-literate. Many, and I believe the vast majority, have little understanding of the difference between advertisers with a strong emphasis on profiling of users and advertisers who do nothing but provide ads.

Users who would like to maintain their privacy, but with limited understanding of the way ads are provided are far better served to simply block everything than to place their trust in an advertising provider to “do the right thing” not just today, but into the future.

This also is compounded by the fact that basically all advertisers conduct themselves with a “trust me” attitude. The advertisers that offer the option to opt out of profiling tend to bury their opt-out page, rather than making it easy to find. None provide a robust method to avoid profiling in the future (any time cookies are cleared the user would have to go through the opt-out process of each advertiser over again).

Even if there were operators who were truly going to safeguard the privacy of their advertisees, the actions of the larger majority have severely limited the chance that they will not be trusted.

The online advertising industry have brought blanket ad blocking upon themselves.

p.s. yes, that really is my email address.

I can’t agree more that flashing, jittering, take-over-your screen ads should be banished from the earth. See our article on “Why adblocking software”. I make the exact same points.

http://www.adblock.org/article_why_adblocking.html

The point is that by blocking ads with such sweeping rules that it blocks EVERY ad and more without any indication to the user that it is happening is simply irresponsible.

Most reasonable people understand that websites cost money to run and don’t mind seeing passive ads on the page, e.g., Google Adsense ads. Are you one of those people?

On the issue of ad-blocking and NIS.
I think the first solution to the problem is to educate the consumer. Let them know what is installed on their machine may affect the way they view web sites. The average computer user needs to understand that tools like NIS and similar are overkill and that if they are concerned about pop-up ads that there plenty of free tools that do not interfere with how you view the web.

Second, we need to mobilize and put pressure on Symantec for black listing every major affiliate program, except certain Major sites. I can attest to this, I run a site for a membership management association and we use HitBox for our traffic reporting software and when users (w/NIS) come to our site all they get is a blank page (We do not serve ads on our site..its becuase HitBox is on the Black list). Immediately the user thinks that our web site is the problem. Maybe if the consumer was aware of how this software affects how they use the web they might not use it. I have installed the product on my machine so I can see how NIS affects your web surfing experience, but also to figure out how to configure the product to allow users to view our site with it turned on. Maybe if Symantec were a little more forthcoming on how and what their software does, maybe more users would not use it. Also Symantec has a responsibilty to provide better documentation. The documentation and support site is horrible for the basic user.

I commend this site for the breadth and depth of informatio available. I feel that we need to get this brought to the attention of the media, so we can begin to promote user choice and responsible software distribution. Lets take an example from Mozilaa with the Spread FireFox campaign. I’d be willing to donate money for a full page ad in the NY Times to bring this issue to the forefront.

-HHH

Firefox + Adblock: Take back the web.

The big problem, in our opinion, is when the blocking is done without the user even knowing what’s going on. What, are they doing people favors? Who is Symantec to decide what people should see or not?