Does anyone use ad blocking software?

[ericthecleric]

If so, what's a good (free) one?

Does it improve your internet performance? I find that many times, web pages are slow loading because of ads.

(I'm talking about ones for a laptop, not phone or tablet or whatever.)

[KingOfNinjas]

Advertisements do tend to slow down performance.

Which browser do you use? For most, I would recommend uBlock Origin.

[Ambrosia Slaad]

I use uBlock Origin (Chrome, Opera, Firefox) -- not the variant uBlock+ -- and Privacy Badger (Chrome, Opera, Firefox). I find it will often speed up performance on many websites, although I will usually whitelist sites I visit often as long as they aren't too ad-heavy and script-infested

Edit: Ninja'd.

[Redelia]

I use Adblock Plus on Firefox (Windows). I don't know if there is anything better, since I've been using this since back when Firefox was called Firebird. I think that it's less the ad blocker that speeds up my browser and more the settings that I use that block scripts and flash and stuff like that unless I give permission to use them.

[John Woodford]

I don't have an ad blocker, but I use the NoScript plugin with Firefox--keeps javascript from running on a site unless I give it permission, and breaks it down by script origin.

[TriOmegaZero]

Same as Redelia, haven't had any problems.

[Talonhawke]

TriOmegaZero wrote:

Same as Redelia, haven't had any problems.

Thirded

[NobodysHome]

I'm old-school, so I use Firefox with NoScript (no JavaScript I don't explicitly allow) and FlashBlock (don't play Flash. Ever.). It makes web sites much faster, but as you start whitelisting stuff some sites (I'm looking at you, Yahoo!) let advertisers use their script hosts, so I've just stopped going to Yahoo!. No big loss.

[ericthecleric]

Thanks for the replies, all!

[parsimony]

Firefox with no auto-running video and Flash disabled and a hosts file that blocks all the major click-advertisers. Everything is very much faster this way. None of this is added software, just Firefox options and the hosts text file which short-circuits the ads.