7% of most popular websites try to ban users with adblock software

About 7% of the 5,000 most popular websites block visitors using an adblocker, according to a report (PDF) written by researchers from several Universities. Researchers from the University of Cambridge, Stony Brook, Berkeley, Queen Mary and the International Computer Science Institute analyzed how many websites currently employ anti-adblock technology.

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Adblock software continues to increase in popularity as users feel it protects their privacy, enhances their internet experience and protects them against malware. Website publishers are concerned about ad blockers as most of them rely on advertising revenues. Therefore it's not longer possible to visit some sites when using an adblocker. Users visiting such a site receive a warning asking them to disable their adblock software or to whitelist the site before they can continue.

The researchers found that 6.7% of the top 5,000 websites, as reported by Alexa, is using this kind of anti-adblock technology. In many cases the sites use anti-adblock scripts as currently available from 12 different vendors. Some websites have also developed their own in-house anti-adblock technology. The anti-adblock software isn't a waterproof solution, 6 of the 12 anti-adblock scripts  are already circumvented by popular adblockers like AdBlock Plus, Ghostery and Privacy Badger. This means that the anti-adblock scripts no longer properly block users with adblock software installed.

"It is hard to say how many levels deeper the ad blocking arms race might go. While anti-ad blocking may provide temporary relief to publishers, it is essentially band-aid solution to mask a deeper issue, the disequilibrium between ads (and, particularly, their behavioural tracking back-end) and information. Any long term solution must address the reasons that brought users to adblockers in the first place", the researchers conclude.

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