It garbles advertisers’ data as a result, but you must disable uBlock Origin to run it; they can’t work simultaneously. I recently moved to it and, so far, am never looking back!

  • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    Couple of issues I’m wondering about…

    First, wouldn’t clicking on everything just make you easier to track?

    Second, how much bandwidth would all this use?

    • archonet@lemy.lol
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      1 day ago
      1. not in this way
      2. not enough to matter

      the way it works is sending an HTTP request that registers as a “click” to the advertiser (thus costing them money), but then doesn’t actually let the browser download any content and fetch the webpage, basically pi-holes the destination site and any attached tracking cookies. Combined with the fact that it does this to every ad, it would basically poison any click tracking.

      edit: pedants

      and before I get any more of you, this is just what I remember reading about adnauseam, do not take it as gospel, go look at AdNauseam’s FAQ.

      • lumony@lemmings.world
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        3 hours ago

        Thanks for doing your part to spread the truth in this sea of lies and FUD.

        It’s clear that most people these days are proud consumers with more money than sense. All they care about is looking good in front of their consumerist friends, and they base all of their actions and decisions around what will support that ideology.

        As a kid, I thought useful idiots were rare. Now I see it’s the exact opposite.

      • Victor@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        none

        Ah great

        it works [by] sending an HTTP request that registers as a “click” to the advertiser

        Uh, wait a minute. 🤔

        Sending a request also uses bandwidth, you know.

        • Bourff@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          A basic GET request, even with a long querystring, will be negligible even on a 1998 dial-up connection.

          • Victor@lemmy.world
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            16 hours ago

            Right, but thousands of them, possibly every day? Could perhaps affect your data consumption on your phone e.g. 🤷‍♂️

            Edit: I got it guys, thanks.

            • Bourff@lemmy.world
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              16 hours ago

              I don’t know of any data plan that limits on the upload. Caps are usually on the download side, and TFA says it does not download the server response.

            • Yggstyle@lemmy.world
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              18 hours ago

              You aren’t terribly familiar with how much traffic we generate nowadays… are you? If we were still on 2G and isdn / dsl sure. You’d likely see a slight latency jump. On anything from this last decade+ ? Not a chance.

              • Victor@lemmy.world
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                17 hours ago

                I’m not, am I. I hadn’t done any calculations regarding this. It was strictly hypothetical, as you can probably tell from the question mark and 🤷‍♂️. 👍

                • Yggstyle@lemmy.world
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                  17 hours ago

                  I’ll be honest - you weren’t really presenting your case in that way. Understand my confusion: you seemed pretty adamant about your concern with no backing data on it. Most people pick their hills with something to back them.

        • archonet@lemy.lol
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          1 day ago

          Okay, fine, not enough to matter. Are you satisfied with that?

            • archonet@lemy.lol
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              21 hours ago

              lol

              furthermore: lmao.

              you’ve got to try a lot harder to “rustle” me, but I like your moxie for thinking you did, sport

              doing the math, even the cheapest phone plans that don’t explicitly exclude data, nowadays include at least 1GB of data for free. Usually more. Almost any reachable amount of outbound requests to click on ads would barely put a dent in your data allowance.

              • Victor@lemmy.world
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                17 hours ago

                Now the name calling. Cool, dude.

                I’ll concede the data plan dent thing; I hadn’t done any math regarding that. Thanks for clarifying that to me and everyone else!

                But you did say “none” so I just pointed out the fact that it’s not none. It’s some. I wasn’t wrong to point that out. No matter how much of a stickler you find me for that.

                But that’s no reason to post images implicitly depicting me to be some kind of fat nerd.

                You’re a rude person. Autistic or not.

                • archonet@lemy.lol
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                  16 hours ago

                  I’ll concede the data plan dent thing; I hadn’t done any math regarding that. Thanks for clarifying that to me and everyone else!

                  I accept your concession, better luck next time.

                  But you did say “none” so I just pointed out the fact that it’s not none. It’s some. I wasn’t wrong to point that out. No matter how much of a stickler you find me for that.

                  pedantry is pedantry, if you interject with “well ACKSHUALLY” over literally a couple kilobytes of data in this, the Year Of Our Lord 2025 where common storage device sizes are in the multiple terabyte range, and 100mbps down/10 up is exceedingly common, expect to be called one. It is functionally none, because it is not 1993.

                  Autistic or not.

                  can’t even come up with your own insult for me, just gonna steal that sad attempt at bait from the other guy? how… underwhelming, must do better. 🤡

                  • Victor@lemmy.world
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                    16 hours ago

                    better luck next time.

                    Huh?

                    I accept your concession

                    K.

                    if you interject with “well ACKSHUALLY”

                    Those are your words, not mine. 😛

                    where common storage device sizes are in the multiple terabyte range,

                    I was talking about data sent over a network, not stored on disk. 🤷‍♂️

                    can’t even come up with your own insult for me, just gonna steal that sad attempt at bait from the other guy?

                    My god. I’m not “out to get you” here, this isn’t Reddit, will you fucking relax, dude? I thought you said that you were autistic? Maybe I misinterpreted you. Maybe it was someone else.

                    All good now? Ready to drop the insults? ❤️

              • Colloidal@programming.dev
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                15 hours ago

                You do have a point, but… It’s not for nothing. It’s to hurt the predatory ad industry. And what you give up isn’t much: your IP address and likely the referral (so they know you visited website X that was serving their ad). It’s up to you to decide whether that’s an acceptable privacy cost to conduct this kind of guerilla ad warfare.

                It would be cool if it could somehow integrate to a VPN and only do that while the VPN is active. I don’t think it’s possible, though.

                edit: Just found out from their FAQ:

                Does AdNauseam respect the browser’s private-browsing/incognito modes?
                Yes, AdNauseam does not collect or click Ads that occur on pages loaded in private-browsing or incognito windows, unless manually enabled by the user.

                • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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                  15 hours ago

                  It would be cool if it could somehow integrate to a VPN and only do that while the VPN is active. I don’t think it’s possible, though

                  Potentially possible, but I agree, likely not worth the effort.

          • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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            1 day ago

            I think we’re far past caring about a website logging an IP address.

            • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
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              21 hours ago

              I’m past caring about giving my IP to a website that I want to use, but what this is doing is handing out your information to every single advertiser that is published on any page you visit. In some cases this plugin would match the definition of “leaking personal data”.

              You do you though. I won’t stop you.

              • Fizz@lemmy.nz
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                19 hours ago

                Most people dont have static IPs. All the ads would see is web requests from random residential ips from a certain country.

                • Colloidal@programming.dev
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                  15 hours ago

                  I don’t know about NZ (or wherever you are), but IP addresses for residential access in the US don’t really change all that much. It’s… concerning.

                  • Yggstyle@lemmy.world
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                    18 hours ago

                    Every 10,000 miles. Or after you hit 40. Before putting it on?

                    Shit. I know this one… uh…

          • archonet@lemy.lol
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            1 day ago

            so use a VPN? if you’re the sort of user using AdNauseam, and is concerned about tracking, you’re probably also the sort of user who already uses a VPN.

    • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com
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      1 day ago

      Yeah, I can’t find an answer whether the “click” is behind some obfuscation, or if the “click every ad” is the obfuscation step itself by attempting to poison the data. The latter may work but yes, may actually increase tracking. Wish that answer wasn’t so hard to find on their site.

        • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.com
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          23 hours ago

          Thanks, I didn’t see this, there was a different embedded FAQ that didn’t have the specific Q & A below.

          But, if anything, it seems to confirm the ad itself is just legitimately clicked from the user’s IP address and hidden from the user, and that there is code execution protection, but not that there is any privacy protection? It’s still very ambiguous.

          How does AdNauseam “click Ads”?

          AdNauseam ‘clicks’ Ads by issuing an HTTP request to the URL to which they lead. In current versions the is done via an XMLHttpRequest (or AJAX request) issued in a background process. This lightweight request signals a ‘click’ on the server responsible for the Ad, but does so without opening any additional windows or pages on your computer. Further it allows AdNauseam to safely receive and discard the resulting response data, rather than executing it in the browser, thus preventing a range of potential security problems (ransomware, rogue Javascript or Flash code, XSS-attacks, etc.) caused by malfunctioning or malicious Ads. Although it is completely safe, AdNauseam’s clicking behaviour can be de-activated in the settings panel.

      • cageythree@lemmy.ml
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        16 hours ago

        In the short term, I would think so.

        In the long run, it makes it less appealing for companies to advertise, because they would have larger costs while having less sales. That, in return, hurts Google as advertisers don’t want to pay as much anymore. If 80% of all users used this extension, advertisers would have to pay more than ever, while having only 20% of all users can be reached (simplified, of course).

        Or in short, it’s designed to hurt the system as a whole, not specific companies.

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        The advertisers are paying for the opportunity either way. Clicks cost them more money than just displaying the ad. Useless clicks cost them money for nothing.

      • Ilovethebomb@lemm.ee
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        1 day ago

        No, because it devalues their click through, as no sales will result from those clicks.

        It’s kinda like printing money, there’s more of it, but the overall value hasn’t increased.