Ad Blocking, Ad Networks, and Your IP Address (opens in new tab)

Amongst those four arguments, I again don't see mine:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10241380

I don't want ads because I don't want to be manipulated into buying things I don't need. I especially don't want to allow this manipulation while I'm in the middle of something else.

Even if ads were presented with speed, privacy, and safety, I still don't want them.

I know that iOS 9 is allowing ad-blocking, but a majority of the articles I've seen on HN and elsewhere aren't saying anything new. Yes, we know what an IP address can reveal, and we also have heard all the arguments behind blocking ads or not. But nothing has really changed since iOS 9, besides the fact that even more people are doing it.

If you think AD blocking alone is enough to protect your privacy, think again. I think the real problem is fingerprinting. You are always going to be tracked on the web, and one can tunnel their traffic through a hardware-based TOR router, and surf with Lynx browser and still get tracked. Also blacklisting entire classes of AD networks is not thorough enough as a lot of publishers are doing 'roll your own' ADs. You can't block an 80x80 banner graphic with a link yet (well you could if you block images, but we're not all neckbeards who surf with Lynx). You could thwart low hanging fruit stuff like 1x1 pixel beacons, but AD serving technology is ambiguous and also one of the many hard problems of the web.

Shameless plug, I wrote about how to thwart browser fingerprinting here: http://blog.higg.im/2015/04/29/do-ad-blockers-and-anti-track...

My current solution is use any number of things on privacytools.io and try not to centralize browsing to one device and one network. A bit obvious, but you would be surprised how many people just use their phone to navigate the web.

Like all hard problems, there is no sweeping silver bullet that will solve this. You have to get smarter about your browsing. The 'mixing effect' of cities is a great idea, and cheap $10.00 internet enabled burner devices for surfing the web are awesome too

IP addresses can be geolocated. Big deal. This article seems a little out of date when it comes to what an IP address means for home users. (For mobile users, there are far easier means of tracking than via IP address.)

For instance.... "One important thing to note is that most consumers probably have a “dynamic ip address” meaning that your internet service provider probably rotates this ip address ever 24-48 hours. Your internet service provider usually charges more money for static ip addresses which is where you keep the same ip forever."

Really? Mine hasn't changes in over a year. My ISP could change it, but absent any reason to do so they don't bother. Once upon a time they would assign new IPs when boxes turned off and on, but security measures these days mean neighbourhoods are assigned small pools of IPs. Turn off and on and you will more often than not be assigned the same IP. Besides, nobody turns off cable/DSL modems anymore anyway. Truly dynamic IP's disappeared with dialup.

And... "So each and every web request I make to any website, can find out my city, state, zip code, internet service provider, time zone, average city income, average population, and if I’m residential."

Nope. Mine is always wrong. All the geolocation services place my IP in the wrong city. That's because my area is served by boxes one town over. So all the info gathered via my IP address beyond which state/province I'm in would be incorrect. These online IP databases are not the same as actually phoning an IP for a street address. They are at best a good guess.

I would gladly pay a small fee to not have to see adds.

The issue is how to solve that, how could i pay that fee in a simple manner where the cash only goes to the sites that i use.

Flogging a dead horse of a story certainly brings in the clicks, which in the past has resulted in more advertising revenue.

I'm interested to see if this continues, or if it declines since there is a reduced financial incentive.

I could imagine that in a world of paywalls, this is disincentivised, since your users don't want to have the same crap thrown at them over and over (as opposed to now, where publishers make as much controversy/noise as possible in the hope of attracting new clicks).

Could it be that this change in model requires more thoughtful journalism?

This is pretty low quality description of a very complicated industry: http://www.lumapartners.com/lumascapes/display-ad-tech-lumas...

And the best part, nothing is said about the fact that blocking inside apps is not on the table, so Apple is simply driving more dollars to where they stand to capture the most from them.

The war of ad-blockers and anti-ad-blockers will be ugly, I suppose.

Say, if Youtube is going to enforce anti-ad-blocking across the site, and I believe the could do that-their Chinese copycat, Youku, has already done this long time ago, will you give up watching? That might be a hard question to answer.

It's funny how both sides of the argument think that ads are something people has to "put up with". If ads are really that good, not watching would cost you (either money or a nice opportunity for good products). For now I don't really see that much of benefit of seeing them (it's the absent of benefits so it's really hard to measure though). I hope web ads companies one day start producing ads that are actually pleasant to watch (some TV commercials are doing a good job here). Until then, you can't really stop people blocking ads.

This is a war that will force websites to find workarounds ... from redirecting you to a message saying sorry this content is blocked you are running an adblocker to innovators creating work arounds that ad blockers can't block and they are more annoying then the ads we have now.

The web has flourished and we all get to enjoy it for free because advertising. Though the majority here seem to want all ads to be blocked... does that mean the majority will then sign up and pay each site for their content? Highly doubtful ... so what is the solution, people need to be paid for the content we consume each day for free on the web!

A note about the IP addresses: Some ad networks/analytics software does not store your IP address, but an anonymized version of it (eg. drop the last octet[1] or an store only an hash). I believe that they must do this in order to operate legally in certain countries.

They can still store the geoIP information without storing the IP, though.

[1]: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2763052?hl=en

Where you are is only marginally useful to advertisers. What you've clicked on is sort of useful. The really valuable information is what you've bought and paid for.

That's what makes Amazon go. Other advertisers would like that info, but they have to buy it from people who actually sell real stuff, and those sellers don't sell it cheaply.

(Of course, Amazon's product recommendations would be more useful if they stopped spamming them with ads for their failing mobile devices.)

As a publisher who depends on ads I do not have a problem with people using adblockers. Those wouldn't click on an ad anyway, so no money lost. But those guys running around and installing adblockers on every computer where they have access to, even without asking the owner before, those guys suck.