There is a serious problem brewing on the internet. Everyone expects content to be free, content providers accept this, trying to make their way with a mix of selling advertising and profiling their customers. Many users turn to tools like Adblock to shut out unwanted interruptions, they use Do Not Track in an attempt to thwart profiling, and the truly focused will run tools like Script Safe, which permit them fine grained control over which sites they’ll permit to send dynamic content.
Those methods make for a cleaner, faster internet experience, but at the cost of starving content providers, perhaps fatally. Premium sites like Wired now sense ad blockers and show a few second tease of an article, then they shift to asking users to ‘whitelist’ ads on their site. If you’re part of Wired’s target demographic their ads are likely products you might purchase, but there is another nasty hazard that nobody who depends on ad sales wants to address.
There are so many attacks that originate on ad sites that there is even a new word to describe this – malvertising . If you agree to whitelist a content site, you’re permitting not just their material, but also all of the ad sites, and you’ll have to accept Javascript. This language is used for programs that must run within your browser, and in the hands of a bad guy it’s the vehicle for attacking vulnerable browsers.
Brave , a new browser by a team led by no less than Brendan Eich, the creator of the Javascript language and cofounder of Firefox browser maker Mozilla, is about to change everything. The blockchain is the heart of this new system. Brave Homepage The goal is to only have good ads. We want fewer ads that are much more relevant, and we […]
