> They're just afraid of losing their revenue. Cowards.

Yeah, there you go. The selfish knee-jerk ad-hating with no awareness of reality or real business.

Yes, the ad-supported model isn't ideal, and has been exploited by bad people. But the reality is that you get free content where the percentage of pixels on a page devoted to ads is typically much less than the percentage minutes of ads on free OTA television, and less than the percentage of inches in a $4.95 magazine. Oh boo-hoo.

If you bother to take a deep dive into reality, there are tens-of-thousands of long-tail websites that rely on advertising to remain online and perhaps even pay salaries. They also pay hosting providers who happen have people working for them. Those hosting providers also have their own vendors, and so on. The economic ecosystem extends far beyond that website on which you run ad-blocker and steal their content by breaking the social contract of using their bandwidth and consuming their content in exchange for seeing their ads.

Yeah, this won't be a popular response. But it's true.

I've worked with several ad networks, on a number of issues, and can say with absolute confidence that the author has no concept of how the technology actually works, which results in an outright lie in his thread-starter.

The JavaScript code originates with the ad delivery platform (DoubleClick, OpenX, 24/7, etc.), sometimes outsourced to the ad networks -- DoubleClick is a white label delivery platform for many ad networks. The JavaScript is tightly controlled and constantly subject to real-time auditing by several providers such as The Media Trust. The advertisers simply provide the assets -- the banner creative -- that is delivered by the ad network, optimization systems, and ad delivery platforms.

Currently, yes, it all sucks and is why we have had blockers, but is also the only option to monetize free content -- for now.

If the cookies are anonymous pointers to database data specific to user "SJHja67J723bawhWE," how is it privacy invasion again? Little confused here.

He just "invented" JPEG too!

All this tuss-up over cookies and "browser fingerprints" ... has anyone ever pointed to any contemporary examples of where the anonymous alphanumeric string in a cookie and/or "browser fingerprint" (combination of header information of OS, browser version, IP, etc.) has resulted in any bad thing happening to good people?
Anyone?
Anyone?
"What's your point Walter?"
"Shut the -F- up Donnie!"

And every major AV vendor obfuscates and over-states the threat associated with cookies.
nope - no agenda

Because the "bad stuff" didn't come from the domain you're testing.

I do think they should be responsible, but the nature of the report -- specifying top-tier domains as a *SOURCE* of malware -- is deceptive and inaccurate.
The daisy-chain is the problem in both this and privacy concerns.

Let's see here... an anti-malvertising/malware firm reporting lots and lots of malicious "bad things" being served up by those terrible pesky Internet ads... no agenda here. The report failed to follow-through and dig into the real problem with malicious payloads associated with online ads, the ad network daisy-chain. If network-A has no impression for you, you're handed off to network-B, which may have no impression and then gives you to network-C... and so on. As your impression traverses the daisy chain, the likelihood of hitting a low-tier ad network that allows any wanker with a (stolen) credit card to order millions of impressions increases... where the malware begins. We scan our ad tags daily, using two methods -- a dozens-of-times-an-hour service, and our own script on a minimally-protected PC. We've never seen malware from a advertising assets delivered by a top-tier ad network... when we see malware, it's ALWAYS from a provider down the daisy-chain.

It's interesting to see, again, how some seem to think that proactive moderation of a privately owned discussion venue is censorship. In the "censored" site, I'm sure there are many banned members crying that their vulgarity-laced and off-topic posts are being deleted and their accounts terminated. Wha wha wha. The reality is that intelligent people prefer a civil environment in which to discuss interesting topics. Children prefer a chaotic environment where they can spew about drugs and use naughty words with reckless abandon. But when interesting topics are discussed by knowledgeable people with normal social graces, which do you think will have the more valuable discussions, and hence, more actual traffic? (posts do not equal traffic) DISCLAIMER: I run one such very-large venue that gets 4,000+ posts a day, 1.2 million monthly visitors ---- and no one is allowed to insult, swear, or discuss inappropriate topics... huh, decorum works.