Battleangel

For months now I’ve endured the endless onslaught of internet ads. Well, no more!
They are everywhere aren’t they? On your favorite web page, in your email box and even on big commercial sites that should really be able to afford a banner-free operation. Since my free webhost (host.sk) do not enforce ads I can with good conscience recommend everyone to install a filter - hey, as long as I’m not hurt, why should I care?
The reason I’m putting it like this is obvious. The internet bubble burst a long time ago and one of the foundations keeping it all alive (much like tv and newspapers) is the ads concept. The only difference is of course that the internet is interactive and that these ads can be removed in a more or less clever way. But it is a question of conscience .. if everyone would do it then many sites would disappear entirely. Not that showing an ads is the same thing as clicking on it but still. There is always the potential click. And that is what people get paid for mostly. Do I care? No …

What is my solution to the ad problem then? Simple, localhost web proxies. Every http connection is filtered by a little application running locally. You get the general idea. Naughty ads, animated gifs, cookies, scrolling text and basically all the nuisances of the internet are whisked away. There really is no downside to this, other than some secure sites that might start to malfunction .. but all the proxies I’ve tried can easily be disabled for this purpose.
In the good old days of the internet I used Naviscope. Well, as ingenious as the program is, it hasn’t been updated in like two years. Miraculously it still works but it has a few unexplainable quirks that get the best of me. This is still the number one program if you can get it to work and don’t mind updating the old ad database.
By ad database I’m referring to the fact that regardless how clever a proxy is designed, it still has to identify the material. And since the internet is such a changing environment with limitless content this is something that is difficult to keep track of. Either you choose a tool with a constantly updated database or you will have to prepare to do some manual editing every time an ad slips by the proxy. No big deal, but the whole point of installing a proxy would be to make web surfing easier …
Anyway. I would still recommend Naviscope because it has - prefetching, DNS resolution caching, persistent connections, MTU/RWIN optimizations and ad blocking. All rolled into one package. Also there is a powerful SiteMapper and best of all .. the Web activity monitor. Full control. Not a byte of data will slip you by. But still, a bit outdated.

Secondary solutions from the same category of tools:
There is Junkbuster for example. The author actually recommends Guidescope (sounds like “naviscope”, hmmm?) instead because of easier setup. Haven’t tried any of these tools though.
Currently I’m test driving Proximitron v4.3. Works like a charm so far. Nothing gets by this one. It kills frames, midi, sound, java, js, css, foreign languages, tables, layers, dhtml, alert boxes, onload, onunload, geocities (haha!), auto-refresh, pop-ups, blinking text, backgrounds, exotic fonts, obscure urls, hot-linked images and a bunch of other things. It’s configurable of course. Another important feature is enabling right clicking even if the webmaster prohibited this. The program can also make a living hell for sites using referers and cookies (as well as faking the web browser signature). Evil begets evil.

Still not happy? Google keeps a very neat listing of popular Ad filters here.