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These days, ads are all basically malware. They're trying to sell you something. In the old days, the ads frequently made factual claims, and many of them were just lies. During the 1980s there was a show called "Fight Back - With David Horrowitz." The show would examine the claims by TV ads and test whether they were true or not. This basically killed a lot of those type of ads. By the 1990s, the ads stopped making any claims that could be factually tested. They started making ads about "image," something that couldn't be tested since it was opinion. They also started making outlandish, humorous ads, that were definitely not verifiable claims or so outlandishly silly that nobody would consider them to be true. Now, the ads are online. There are enough ad companies that accept malicious scams and malware that make people want to block them. Worse, they have to block them. I consider an adblocker a first line of defense against malware attacks now. Back when Ads were flash based, they were already a type of Malware. My kids used to play flash games and the gaming web site would have a dozen Flash elements and at least half were just ad elements. When they all ran, the older computers they used would come to a crawl and the games weren't playable or couldn't even run. I would install a Flash Blocker and only enable 2 or 3 of the elements needed for the game to work. The ads prevented them from being able to actually play the game. They basically acted as malware on the system, denying service. These days, many ad networks just accept any ad and some of them are just actual malware in disguise. I usually suggest Adblock Plus for regular, non-technical users, because it allows ads on popular "legitimate sites" and doesn't popup warnings about using adblockers, which may cause the non-technical to disable or uninstall the adblocker. I would only use a more thorough adblocker that blocks all ads for someone that's more technical and can figure how or when to toggle the settings. The reason malware comes through ads now is because systems are no longer so easy to compromise remotely. Malware needs users to give them access. Ads are basically a work around to that access. |