I’m looking to block ads, especially when viewing Youtube. What are the best ad blocking programs out there? Free would be nice but if the best is for a price, I’ll pay it if it makes a big difference.
I’ve tried several browsers and went back to IE.
Ads are not tied to the operating system, but the browser. If you’re looking for specific IE ones, say so, although I would recommend some other browser, if only for the reason that people tend not to update IE as often.
Adblock Plus is normally recommended for Firefox, and it’s on some other browsers. Free, easy to use, pretty powerful. If you want something that does keep the OS clean, then maybe look into something like Spybot Search & Destroy, with its “Immunize” function.
With IE, there is something called “Simple Adblock” but I’ve never used it. Wikipedia says you can export an XML of blocked sites and put it into IE.
AdBlock Plus is also available for Chrome, as well as an extension that specifically blocks YouTube ads. There are literally thousands of free extensions to choose from on the Chrome Web store (Chrome Web Store).
I personally have a pretty low opinion of IE. Firefox and Chrome both seem to be more stable and have less problems with security issues (which, to be fair, might be because IE is more targeted by malware authors rather than reflecting truly better designs in other browsers, not sure). Also, there are more and better add-ons available and they are easier to install and maintain (IMHO). I personally use Firefox with Adblock Plus and NoScript. Our IT department at work installed Chrome on my PC. Make what you will of both of those recommendations.
That said, if you are absolutely certain you want to stick with IE, it does have a thing called Tracking Protection available which apparently functions like an ad blocker. I’ve never used it and can’t say how well it works, but it does use a list subscription like Adblock Plus so there’s that.
I found these instructions on the internet. I haven’t tried it personally so I won’t guarantee that they are correct. I also don’t know how effective it is at blocking ads.
The best ad blocking software i have seen so far is privoxy. It operates closer to the operating system’s network management features and looks for suspicious flags in incoming traffic. If the advertisement traffic has anything which privoxy sees as most likely being an advertisement it will redirect its own information in place of it to show the user that it has flagged the item as an advertisment. This is great to add beside an advertisment because you can prevent malware flagged things from installing. This + spybot - search and destroy + avast antivirus will keep your computer clean from virus’s, malware and annoying ads.
Not strictly true. Look into HOSTS file based ad blocking. For me at least it gets many ads that even ABP misses. And it works on all browsers on the same system. Definitely use a browser based blocker with it, though. Belt & suspenders.
I always pronounce IE as “Aiieeee!”
Ah true. But do most ad blockers mess with that? You average user should not be messing with it.
If you go for hosts file blocking, I would recommend finding some sort of software that would automatically update it for you at regular intervals. What may be an ad network domain name one month may be serving legitimate content the next.
I’d bet against this being any significant factor; the ad-source hosts tend to use long, bizarrely-constructed names. I also doubt that a host could go from being an ad host to anything particularly desirable to visit.
In those very few cases where ads might be hosted by a simple and useful domain name that then becomes a site worth visiting, discovering that your browser blocks attempts to visit it should be simple enough to fix.
ABP does use an update system, although it’s a secondary plug-in.