Welcome to the Fast-Air Tech Talk newsletter. The Tech Talk newsletter is a free service for all Fast-Air customers. Please feel encouraged to suggest newsletter topics.
The innocent days of the world wide web are gone. Originally people shared information for the pure joy and excitement of sharing. Today much of the web is fueled by advertising.
Some level of revenues are needed to sustain all web sites, if for no other reason than to pay for hosting costs. Many web site owners have turned to advertising as a way to support those costs.
Unlike the early days of online advertising, which primarily were harmless static banner ads, online advertising has grown to a point of being intrusive and distracting. Dynamic (video) online ads using Flash or Java increase bandwidth usage, which affects users with data usage caps.
Worse, advertising is now a popular mechanism for delivering malware. Malware delivered through web browser advertising has increased significantly. Unlike the early days of the web, web browsers are now the primary means of introducing malware.
Most online ads are not hosted or generated by the parent web site. Most ads are delivered to a web site from an external content provider server. Outside of contractual stipulations, typically the parent web site owner has no control over the ads. Much of this advertising is purchased programmatically.
Some online ads are static and some are dynamic. Dynamic ads include Flash, Java, and animated GIFs. Online ads can be active or passive. Active advertising is an effort to manipulate. Passive advertising is informational.
The great debate about advertising is quite old. Much like TV and radio, ads allegedly pay for the illusion of “free” content. Ads can be annoying and distracting. Unlike traditional mediums, often online ads conflict with privacy, security, and web browser performance.
Time shifting (recording) and mute buttons allows users to watch or listen to TV and radio programming and skip ads. Controlling online ads achieves the same result. Yet unlike TV and radio ads, online advertising comes with its own dark price: security exploits and a loss of privacy with online tracking.
Tracking is a nice way of saying surveillance.
Advertisers contribute to this problem by failing to ensure their ads are free from malware and are not intrusive or obnoxious. Advertisers accept ads from just about anybody, including malware developers. Malware developers are skilled at discovering previously unknown software exploits.
Advertisers contribute to the hatred of online ads because they refuse to stop tracking people.
The “implied” quid pro quo relationship of free content being financed by advertising ended when advertisements became a vehicle for malware, privacy, and security violations. Ads offered through Flash or Java can be and have been infected with malware. Even static online ads can lead to malware through JavaScript. These types of ads are now referred to as malvertising. Through these malware exploits, some forms of online advertising install unwanted software. Users have solid reasons to block such ads.
Without the problem of malware, web surfers still struggle with online advertising. Unlike other advertising mediums, online web advertisers are overwhelmingly manipulative and in-your-face. Online ads are designed and behave differently than traditional mediums because of the way web browsers are designed. Unlike other mediums, online advertising is interactive. Therein lies the danger.
Online advertisers are obsessed with tracking users rather than just offer ads. Online advertisements consume bandwidth that users must pay for. Excessive and in-your-face advertising alienates users. Popups were hated and detested in the 1990s yet advertisers still think intrusive popup ads are useful.
Advertisers would generate far less resistance and hostility if they treated viewers like people and not bottomless money pits. In the end, advertisers have shown little respect for users.
Advertisers have no standing to complain. People have long been able to ignore ads, whether on TV, radio, billboards, or magazines. Content providers are free to publish the information they want and users are free to ignore. Ignoring online ads is no different. The potential for malware and tracking goes beyond mere ignoring, requiring deliberate actions by users.
This massive effort to use advertising to generate revenues has caused an interesting side effect — a loss of credibility with news sources. Headlines nowadays are much about click-bait. Often headlines are misleading. Often headlines do not match the actual article or report. Instead headlines are written to bait viewers in order to maximize advertising revenues.
Many web site designs require frequent page refreshes, not because of changing content, but because that is a simple way to benefit from refreshing advertisements.
This desire for easy revenues results in another side effect. An estimated one third of web traffic is considered fake. That is, such traffic is the result of hijacked computers and botnets rather than actual human usage. In short, fake web sites created for the sole purpose of obtaining click-through advertising revenues.
How to manage online advertising?
Similar to the mute button with a television or turning the page in a magazine, the simple answer is to block or ignore the advertisements. Or more specific, render ads into a condition where users control them rather than vice-versa.
There are two components involved: 1) an obsessive desire to track people allegedly to “personalize” the advertising and 2) the ads themselves. Both components can be controlled.
One of the easiest solutions is to disable web browser third-party cookies. They are unnecessary. Third-party cookies serve no purpose other than tracking. Although far from comprehensive, this simple change does much to avoid many forms of user tracking.
Next is to control web browser cookies more aggressively. This is done by creating a “white list” of sites allowed to create web browser cookies. This approach requires more sweat equity and patience, but usually can be completed within a few browsing sessions. From that point forward, all web browser cookies are blocked except those explicitly allowed.
Discouraging the obsessive tracking is one thing. Preventing malware infections is another.
Disable or remove the Java web browser plugin. Most people do not need this plugin. Those who do often are online gaming enthusiasts. Some online banking sites require Java (contact any banker who is using Java — this is not necessary and a security nightmare). Yet most people do not need the Java plugin. Those who do should use a separate web browser or create unique browser profiles.
Next is to configure the “click-to-play” option in web browsers to control the Flash plugin. When enabled this feature prevents Flash content from playing at all until a user actually clicks on the Flash content. Flash is slowly being replaced by HTML5 videos and some people find they can uninstall Flash completely and still enjoy online videos.
For those wanting to dig deeper, the next level requires some kind of web browser ad blocker add-on. Popular examples are AdBlock Plus (not to be confused with AdBlock) and uBlock. Ad blocker add-ons provide users the ability to selectively block ads, which some people find useful in order to support and patronize favorite web sites.
The last level, for those who are technically savvy and comfortable tinkering with computers, is to use a hosts file to block specific URLs or use additional software such as a proxy server.
Non technical methods of controlling online ads include forming new habits. Do not click on advertisements. Ever. Note the product name and then investigate the product at a reputable vendor or merchant web site.
Some people are so annoyed by online ads and user tracking that they disable all advertising related options. The result is significantly reduced bandwidth and noise-free web browsing.
One last note. Targeted advertising soon will be common for TV too, at least for those with cable or satellite subscriptions. Cable and satellite vendors have long tracked viewing habits, but have been losing advertising revenues to online advertisers. Thus they now are motivated to use the same tracking techniques.
Technical trivia: The portable storage media most common today is the USB flash drive, also called a jump disk or “stick.” USB flash drives store gigabytes of data. The portable predecessor is the floppy disk so named because of the medium and not the sheath. The first popular floppy disk was 8″ in diameter. Later came the 5-1/4″ disk. Both used a flexible sheath. The popular 3-1/2″ floppy disk used a rigid plastic sheath and could could hold 1.44 MB of data, although compression schemes could push that to about 1.7 MB.
Next issue: Understanding Usage Data Caps.
Everybody loves soft little babies, right?
- Free Gift Phishing Scams (Notice 2020-001) - January 15, 2020
- Tech Support Phone Scam (Notice 2019-001) - March 14, 2019
- VPNFilter Router Malware (Notice 2018-007) - May 30, 2018