this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
861 points (97.4% liked)

Technology

68400 readers
2320 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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!

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] lumony@lemmings.world 70 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I've been recommending this for awhile, it's nice to see someone else take up the mantle.

Yes, it clicks ads in addition to blocking them. Google removed it from its addon repository even though it wasn't breaking any rules. They just removed it and kept it removed because there wasn't sufficient backlash, the scumbags.

It's the main reason why I use Firefox these days. it's clear that the cabal will not allow anything that legitimately threatens their power structure, and make advertising less-effective for the same price is a gut punch they need.

[–] milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 24 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Automated ad clicks probably are breaking the rules, TBF.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 8 points 3 days ago

Don't care. At this point I will take being actively malicious toward them.

[–] wonderfulvoltaire@lemmy.zip 24 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] CPMSP@midwest.social 6 points 3 days ago

That comment is correct on so many levels...

[–] renzev@lemmy.world 135 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] lemmeBe@sh.itjust.works 48 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (6 children)

Has the same limitations as uBlock Origin with Manifest v3 and won't work in Chrome.

[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 161 points 4 days ago (4 children)

If you're still using chrome at this point that's on you.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca 38 points 4 days ago

The solution is simple. Chrome ditches manifest v2? Ditch Chrome.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] NauticalNoodle@lemmy.ml 101 points 5 days ago (3 children)

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.

[–] FauxLiving@lemmy.world 38 points 4 days ago

Exactly. You can't completely avoid being tracked but you can ensure that your profile is just noise without any value to advertisers

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] pyre@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] joshchandra@midwest.social 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

... 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.

[–] pyre@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

they will never go "huh". you give way too much credit to corporate management.

[–] Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee 141 points 5 days ago (9 children)

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?

[–] archonet@lemy.lol 175 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (40 children)
  1. not in this way
  2. not enough to matter

the way it works is sending an HTTP request that registers as a "click" to the advertiser (thus costing them money), but then doesn't actually let the browser download any content and fetch the webpage, basically pi-holes the destination site and any attached tracking cookies. Combined with the fact that it does this to every ad, it would basically poison any click tracking.

edit: pedants

and before I get any more of you, this is just what I remember reading about adnauseam, do not take it as gospel, go look at AdNauseam's FAQ.

load more comments (40 replies)
load more comments (8 replies)
[–] rimu@piefed.social 92 points 5 days ago (9 children)

Google has put a lot of effort into detecting and blocking stuff like this. They call it "click fraud", if you want to look it up.

It'll just mean they start ignoring clicks from you.

[–] diffusive@lemmy.world 76 points 4 days ago (1 children)

That, I guess, it’s the whole point. Stopping being tracked 🙂

[–] cageythree@lemmy.ml 22 points 4 days ago

This feels like reverse psychology on a little kid.

"That's it, I'm not tracking you anymore! >:("
"Oooh nooo, what have I done! Oh how much I would wish to be tracked :("
"No, you won't convince me to change my mind >:("
"Oh well, guess I'll have to live without being tracked, what a shame that is."

[–] 0x0@programming.dev 46 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They call it “click fraud”,

No, click fraud is using botnets to click ads in your site to increase your revenue.

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 28 points 4 days ago (4 children)

When Google can't extract money from you that's fraud!

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] reksas@sopuli.xyz 35 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (4 children)

if enough people start doing it might be effective

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (6 replies)
[–] x00z@lemmy.world 48 points 4 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 5 points 3 days ago

At this point I think it's better to poison the well.

[–] fossilesque@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

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.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] morphballganon@mtgzone.com 35 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Good start. Now make a version that clicks each ad a random number of times from randomly generated IP addresses.

[–] Tja@programming.dev 63 points 4 days ago (29 children)

That's not how IP addresses work.

[–] yarr@feddit.nl 24 points 4 days ago (3 children)

What if we use a Visual Basic UI to hack the IP address by netmask?

load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (28 replies)
[–] GenosseFlosse@feddit.org 18 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Ad Networks use browser fingerprinting to detect duplicate clicks, which is tied to your hardware, system locale, installed fonts etc.

[–] morphballganon@mtgzone.com 19 points 4 days ago (10 children)

Sounds like a solvable problem

[–] viking@infosec.pub 26 points 4 days ago

Chameleon add-on for Firefox, randomly rotates your browser, OS, screen size, timezone, device type, language, and other customizable parameters every x minutes.

I've set it to do so every 5 minutes, and to omit desktop & tablet as device types (else some websites display the respective page) and timezones (messed up 2FA).

I also disabled blackberry and windows phone from the manufacturer ID, that would have the opposite effect from obscuring me.

For the rest of it, it's working great.

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] dantheclamman@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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!

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›