Ad blockers

Anyone familiar with Ad Remover? Or any of these:
https://www.vpnmentor.com/blog/the-best-and-worst-ad-blocker…

I don’t understand the whole VPN thing. Is that something above and beyond simply installing the program on my Windows 10?

I’m just familiar with the Ad Blocker browser extension, and it works well enough. I would also recommend the browser extension for DuckDuckGo if you are looking for privacy from tracking.

As far as a VPN, stay far away from “free” VPN services. They will have access to your data and you have no control what they will skim off and sell. Services like ExpressVPN (what I use on all my devices) are the way to go. It’ll cost you some money, but your data will be safe and your data will not be the product being sold. Their VPN services run in memory (rather than writing to a disk) and they log nothing so it’s truly private.

Phaz

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I missed your question. Yes, a VPN is a separate privacy measure from an ad blocker. An ad blocker will stop ads and other malicious code from running in your browser. You can think of a VPN as a dedicated, private data tunnel that you send your data through to anonymize it on the other end so it’s not easily tracked back to the IP at your home (or mobile phone, etc). Corporations use this technology to give people physically located off of their internal networks access to the internal network safely as well. Again, just stay away from ALL “free” VPN services. You won’t pay with cash up front, but you’ll pay with your data being compromised later.

Phaz

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Thanks Phaz.
If VPN runs in memory, won’t that eat up memory and slow down the computer? It seems like I often have memory problems when too many browser tabs and/or apps are open, so I wouldn’t want to add to the memory burden.
I’m not super concerned about privacy anyway. But I hate all the pop up ads! Way too many of them.
Thanks.

Anyone familiar with Ad Remover? Or any of these:

If one wants an ad blocker for Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox, “uBlock Origin” is pretty good and it’s what I use in Firefox. For a long time I was using “AdBlock Plus” (not “AdBlock”, that got sold to a company and the original author was unhappy about how they mostly neglected it, so the original author came out with and maintains “AdBlock Plus”). What finally caused me to switch from “AdBlock Plus” to “uBlock Origin” was when an upgrade to the “Nightly” (alpha) version of Firefox dropped the old way Firefox interacted with extensions and “uBlock Origin” was the first ad blocker that was able to use the new (at that time) program interfaces. Since both programs use block lists, both have fairly similar blocking capabilities and both should have similar successes with blocking pop-up ads. (I haven’t seen a pop-up ad for a very long time.)

The down side of using extensions like “uBlock Origin” and “AdBlock Plus” is that both run as extensions, using some CPU cycles and memory in the browser (“uBlock Origin” seems a bit better in this area), but one also saves memory and CPU cycles by not loading advertisements. Both blockers allow sites to be “white-listed” (the blocker becomes passive on those sites) for sites that you want to see the ads or you know there are no ads, or sites that refuse to run with the ad blocker active (there are a few).

Both “uBlock Origin” and “AdBlock Plus” are available for Firefox and Chrome where those browsers normally search when one wants to add an extension.

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RBMunkin,

I should have been a bit clearer there. The VPN services themselves, the geographically distributed network hardware that is run by the VPN corporation, is what runs in memory and does not log. Those devices do not have hard drives with files being written.

The VPN client for your computer, tablet or phone will require an installation to your local storage and use a little bit of memory (the VPN client is lightweight).

I’ll also give a +1 to uBlock’s browser ad blocker. It’s top notch.

Phaz

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Ghostery is another good one for Chrome, I’ve used it for years.

Are there any ad blockers that are not detectable by websites? I’m seeing an increasing number of websites that popup a message that says “We see you are using an ad blocker. Please disable if you want to read the content”.

PSU

Thanks, I’ll give UBlock Origin a try.

Looks a bit complicated for a non-techie.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ublock-origin/cjpa…
What are all those lists? Do you choose all of them?

“Additionally, you can point-and-click to block JavaScript locally or globally, create your own global or local rules to override entries from filter lists, and many more advanced features.”

What is JavaScript?

VPN

When you surf the net your computer goes from your router/modem to a server (your provider) to the world. This data isn’t usually encrypted and your provider sees your ip address as well as the website you go to. Companies like google and facebook track your travels on the web and sell this information to companies. Thats why you might be reading about VPN and next thing you know you are getting all these VPN ads. All of these companies try to collect everything they can about you invading your privacy.

A VPN shields this. With a VPN your computer talks through your router/modem through your providers server to a vpn server. The data that goes from your computer to the vpn server and back is encrypted so your provider doesn’t know where you are surfing the internet. The site you are looking at will only see the location of the vpn which could be on the west coast, east coast, southeast US, midwest US or even a foreign country. If you set up your computer correctly ie turn off your location, you become invisible in a sense. Most vpn companies don’t save any information on their clients and so if they get subpoenaed, they have no data stored. Some people want this kind of privacy.

You can turn off the vpn service and back on any time because some banks and stock sites won’t let you log in from a vpn in case you are trying to hack an account. You can select your vpn server so you will look like you are in Chicago or New York or England or wherever they have servers and usually they have servers all over the world. VPN’s are a form of privacy that will cost you some 3 or 4 dollars a month. I use PIA (private internet access) and it costs about $39 per year.

They are easy to install and setup and don’t use much memory, don’t slow your computer down and aren’t usually expensive. Shop around, the major ones are all alike and reliable. NORD is another one but I have been with PIA for years and happy with them. HTH…doc

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+vpn+works&ia=web

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I just renewed my Private Internet Access vpn service. They are doing a special for a little over $72 for 3 years. Thats less than $25 per year which is a great price fyi…doc