# Adblocking
Advertisements have become a form of currency at our expense, infringing on our most shameful YouTube binges and online shopping tendencies. But what’s the impact here, why question what we cannot control? Advertisers are people too, we just fail to see the ways in which they are as mundane as us. Interests are the motivator. Advertisers are showing you what they predict you’ll like, or give an extended amount of attention to. However, this doesn’t expel the creepy factor that targeted ads contain. The idea of being “watched” tends to be the component of advertising that scares the public most. The discomfort of being listened to or watched will outweigh any desire to go on the advertisers website. So why are they doing this, knowing that it’s internally counterintuitive for their audiences? We live in a world of capitalism - they’re profiting.

As aforementioned, advertisements have become a currency in their own right, a means to an end for entire industries and markets. How are people utilizing or exploiting ads to do so? Well, we see the example of the 2016 malvertising. Hackers and other members of this “malicious campaign” used the advertising feature placed on various websites as a means to hack into the computers of those who had seen the “ads.” Once getting into individual harddrives, the hackers would then encrypt the information and request a ransom, most popularly in bitcoin. This hacking epidemic left a multiplicity of internet users vulnerable to potential extortion.

So now what? How do we, as a population, become informed enough to make decisions about these advertisers for ourselves, rather than have someone else’s opinion forced upon us? We keep ourselves informed as to what the processes of these advertisers really are. From the websites we choose to use, to the ad blockers we choose to download (or not download), these seemingly minimal decisions impact the safety of our personal information. Challenge assumptions about each website, it’s advertisers, and their intentions: the only way to find an answer to targeted advertising is to keep asking questions.

Before Ad Blocker:

After Ad Blocker: