# Ad Blocking
## Readings
In the first article it talks about how Web users are increasingly using ad blockers and tracking protection tools to avoid targeted advertising, despite proponents of targeted ads claiming they are personalized and relevant. Apple's Safari browser blocks third-party cookies by default, which can be used for ad targeting. In the article we discover that ad blocking was rare until around 2009/2010 when it became more mainstream due to the growth of retargeting, which made it clear to users that ads were being targeted specifically to them. Online advertising is less trusted than any other form of advertising, and the value of web ads as an advertising medium remains low compared to print, despite technical innovations. Print continues to be a relative bargain for advertisers, creating more value than online and mobile ads. The article then discusses George Akerlof's theory of asymmetric information in markets, where sellers have more information about the product than buyers. This can lead to devastation to the market and will have honest buyers running away. To combat this problem the article suggests, institutions, laws, and norms have been developed, such as licenses, guarantees, and trademark rights. Advertising can also help by informing buyers about products and creating a screening mechanism that separates high-quality sellers from deceptive ones. Signaling then comes into play. Signaling is an action that sends a credible message to a potential counterparty. Advertising spending serves as a signal to consumers that a seller has confidence in their product and that the product is worth investing in. High-quality firms can recover advertising costs while low-quality firms cannot. The perceived expense of advertising influences perceptions of brand quality and brand performance. The effectiveness of advertising and brand performance depend on the perceived advertising expenditure. Ads that run on high-reputation online publishing companies have higher brand lift. Expensive ad-supported resources such as journalism and cultural works are both a positive externality of advertising and a fundamental part of how advertising works. The article then talks about signaling and how targeted advertisements can reduce the amount of information conveyed and create opportunities for deceptive sellers. They also talk about the potential user violations that these targeted ads could be committing and the risk of increasing cognitive load on users. Users have four lines of defense willpower, habits, technology, and regulation. Individuals are also becoming more aware of these targeted ads driving them to become less and less over time even the ones that aren't targeted. The author argues that web ads are moving towards a spam-style of advertising that has no signaling value and is becoming less effective. The author suggests that users are starting to block email spam because it is worthless, even if it complies with CAN-SPAM. Additionally, intermediaries are winning while legitimate sites are losing in the advertising industry. The author then offers some solutions to these ads such as a tracking protection tool for you and the publishers. Through my use of the citation machine there were quite a few ads and after reading about targeted ads and the information they could receive from me is to some degree concerning.

The following read discusses how many ad blocking companies including big names like LinkedIn, Reddit, Amazon, and even Google are being payed large amounts of money to allow acceptable ads to get through to millions of users. This practice had been growing for several years but this is mostly thanks to a new program called acceptable ads. Most ad blocker programs that people install will automatically opt users into the acceptable ads program. Senator Ron Wyden brings this to light in 2020 "urging an investigation into what he called, “unfair, deceptive, and anti-competitive practices in the ad blocking software industry.”" Online ads from advertising networks often install trackers on your device, which gather information about your online activities to create a user profile used for targeted advertising or sold to other ad networks. Acceptable Ads requirements only specify certain visible characteristics of ads that are acceptable and do not prevent tracking. The article then goes into how you can protect yourself from the acceptable ads program such as ad blockers that block all ads by default such as AdGuard. Another way of protecting yourself is by learning how to opt out of receiving acceptable ads.

The last article talks about ads that look completely legitiment but when clicked on it installs GIMP which in reality is malware. Many users were confused about this because the URL was disguised as the actually GIMP site but when clicked on it was actually the phishing site Gilimp. Google allows websites to display a URL that is different to the landing URL where you will be taken to after clicking on the link. Google does have policies that protect people such as display URLs and Landing URLs can be different as long as they are within the same website. Bleeping computer was also able to confirm what it was that users were getting installed on there devices and it was an info stealing trojan called VIDAR. Vidar attempts to steal information such as popular browser information like passwords, cookies, history, and credit cards details, Cryptocurrency wallets, Files according to regex strings given by the TA, Telegram credentials for Windows versions, File transfer application information (WINSCP, FTP, FileZilla), Mailing application information. I will never use gimp or any websites alike I am now frightened.