As online advertising becomes ever more ubiquitous and unsanctioned, AdNauseam works to complete the cycle by automating ad clicks universally and blindly on behalf of its users. Built atop uBlock Origin, AdNauseam quietly clicks on every blocked ad, registering a visit on ad networks’ databases. As the collected data gathered shows an omnivorous click-stream, user tracking, targeting and surveillance become futile (that’s the theory anyway).
So this works similarly to the Firefox extension TrackMeNot, and the AdNauseum website also links to a paper that explains further how the obfuscating should be effective.
Note though this extension is not in the Google Chrome store, so you need to install it separately along with whatever risks that can entail. I see the extension is open source on Github so it is possible to examine the code if you wish.
See https://lifehacker.com/confuse-google-ads-with-this-chrome-extension-1846337139
#technology #browsers #trackers #privacy #adnauseum
The idea is quite interesting, but isn’t Google able to identify those automatic clicks? Do you know if this extension conflicts with Privacy Badger?
Not sure at that level actually although if Google could prevent it they should not have banned it from their app store, they do recommend disabling similar apps though as the other may well block before this one can act.
What benefit does this give over just blocking Google advertising domains with uBlock Origin?
They do explain that a bit more in the article and if I remember correctly at the end they linked to a more detailed study about that.
There was a big fuss about this addon on PTIO on Reddit, I’m still curious if it’s worth using instead of good old uBlock.
uBlock Origins very good at ad blocking - only reason to use this is if you wanted to acknowledge each one and confuse Google and the advertisers. For plain ad blocking though it’s no better than uBlock Origin.
