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German freemail sites trick Firefox and Chrome users into removing AdBlock
- Cenk 13y agoDisgraceful. One of the providers, web.de, also sends it’s users emails with advertisements which cannot be disabled or marked as spam.
- antr 13y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain't_no_such_thing_as_a_free_lunch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_ain't_no_such_thing_as_a...
- Intermernet 13y agoExcept for Wikipedia...
- icebraining 13y agoTANSTAAFL doesn't require all beneficiaries to pay, just that someone must.
- Intermernet 13y agoYes, and therefore, as a Wikipedia contributor I've paid for other's "lunch". I feel they owe me nothing, so from their perspective that "lunch" was free.
- mistercow 13y agoThat's not really what TANSTAAFL means. It's about opportunity cost and externalities, not bait and switch tactics.
- ckoepp 13y agoWell, 1&1/United Internet has a reputation for such bad behavior [1,2]. Actually it's quite easy to just enter some address and order some useless premium services "in behalf" of other people - this actually happened to a member of my family. According to consumer protection organizations this seems to be their business model [3,4]. Note that those links are in German: [1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web.de#Kritik http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web.de#Kritik [2] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmx.de#Kritik http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gmx.de#Kritik [3] http://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/digital/Glueckwunsch-Abzocke-Vorwuerfe-gegen-web-de-und-gmx-net-id27927777.html http://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/digital/Glueckwunsch-Abz... [4] http://www.verbraucherzentrale-niedersachsen.de/link1811119A.html http://www.verbraucherzentrale-niedersachsen.de/link1811119A...
- rjzzleep 13y agooh web.de easily the most dangerous free mail sites there is. it belongs to 1&1[1] one of the bigger internet companies in germany. it's really odd that no one ever shot them down. they are famous for tricking users into shady 2 year contracts, if they wanted to upgrade their 12 mb mailbox. they also upgraded the freemail to 500mb if and only if you would install their browser toolbar, which would change the mail server etc. now it's 1gb with toolbar i think. they tried to force my mum into a contract, because she clicked on a banner while logging(for free xxx mb click here style banners). then promptly closed the account should she not pay. the result was her saying fuck it i'll use gmail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%261_Internet http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%261_Internet http://www.teltarif.de/web-de-freemail-speichererweiterung/news/49610.html http://www.teltarif.de/web-de-freemail-speichererweiterung/n...
- mironathetin 13y agoConfirmed. I use web.de since 1998 as a spam-box, to keep my real account clean. During the last years they indeed try all tricks (we have a present for you, 3 weeks of free membership blah, blah..). If you leave this page now, the present will expire. There is a way to simply ignore this sh..t. All of it. But I agree that it takes discipline (germans are good at that :o). Gmail, on the other hand, cannot be trusted either. While web.de is evil, google is evil too, but google is bigger and google is not an european company. All of the data is used abroad thus circumventing civilized laws. The real problem is this: these companies offer a service and everybody expects free services online. Of course the companies have to make money. Ask yourself: would you pay for an email account (I do)? If not, you have to accept ads. Or googles snooping in your data and selling your profile to everyone who pays. There is no free beer online. At least web.de shows us how ugly it gets, if things have to look like they were free. This is not intended to excuse the primitive tricks we.de uses. But if you have a solution, post it here and I'll get rich.
- danieldk 13y agoOr googles snooping in your data and selling your profile to everyone who pays. You should really read Google's privacy policy: http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/ http://www.google.com/policies/privacy/ So, no, they don't sell your profile. I do agree with your point: if you don't want advertisements. Pay for the service. E.g. Google Apps for domains allows you to disable adds in Google apps. And since you can bring your own domain, you can move to some other service if you are not happy with them.
- blueskin_ 13y agoI doubt even many users will be stupid enough to not only click some random fake error ad, but follow the advice of a dodgy site. Almost everyone who has adblock installed it knowingly, wanting the effect and knowing what it does.
- Perseids 13y agoWhat about all those friends and relatives we do tech support for. Most of them have not installed their addons on their own.
- blueskin_ 13y agoSome but not all. I've been mildly surprised to see family members running chrome (yes, I know, privacy issues with chrome, but better than IE...) or firefox with an ad blocker before.
- eik3_de 13y agoThis is so embarrassing and disgusting. For reference, here's a list of United Internet properties to avoid: 1&1 (aka 1and1.com) GMX WEB.DE InterNetX united-domains Sedo mail.com Fasthosts affilinet Arsys
- donrhummy 13y ago+1. Stay far away from 1and1.com! I had the worst experiences with them of any tech company. Customer service doesn't get worse than them.
- vostrocity 13y agoI would stay away from 1and1 in the future, but their customer service seems alright. The main thing to watch out for is they don't notify you when a contract is about to expire and instead send you the bill after it auto-renews. My fault for getting used to other registrar/hosting services' conventions. They waived and cancelled my account after I called though. I'd say they're a bit more upstanding than EIG's[1] brands. [1] http://www.digitalfaq.com/editorials/websites-blogs/hostgator-alternatives-eig-pt1.htm http://www.digitalfaq.com/editorials/websites-blogs/hostgato...
- iancarroll 13y agoHas anyone had bad experiences with sedo? I haven't.
- chrischen 13y agoI have. They accused me of offering a bid to myself (I didn't) and made no recourse to defend myself.
- scurvy 13y agoAnyone who does business with 1&1 deserves what they get. They're known to generally be amongst the worst in the industry.
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- patal 13y agoCan we update the AdBlock list to suppress said yellow bar from display?
- rmoriz 13y agoin the works: https://hg.adblockplus.org/antiadblockfilters/rev/fa117e18b7db https://hg.adblockplus.org/antiadblockfilters/rev/fa117e18b7...
- marcosdumay 13y agoIt would be better to update browsers, to display a different warning, in a place where a page can't change at all. (And while we are there, Firefox, please, do the same with the master password dialog.) But I doubt any of them will do that because, security be damed, it messes with the minimalist fashion.
- mistercow 13y agoIt would still be helpful even if they just modified the warnings to bleed into the non-page portion of the window somehow. It doesn't have to compromise minimalism. They just need to be creative about it. But I think the best place for it would be between the tab bar and the location bar.
- sauerbraten 13y agoJust to clear one thing up: the fake warning message doesn't say the security is "compromised", but rather "limited" or "constrained": http://pda.leo.org/ende/index_de.html#/search=eingeschr%C3%A4nkt&searchLoc=0&resultOrder=basic&multiwordShowSingle=on http://pda.leo.org/ende/index_de.html#/search=eingeschr%C3%A... What they pull is still shady, but the text seemed a bit sensationalist at that point.
- userbinator 13y agoWhat I don't get is why something like AdBlock should even be detectable... Incidentally, I remember reading before that Germany had the largest percentage of users using AdBlock, so it makes sense that the pushback is starting here.
- DanBC 13y agoI don't understand it. Someone has said that they do not view advertising. They have modified their browser to avoid ads. A marketer choses to ignore that person's choice and choses to use tricky technical means to ignore that person's wishes in order to show an ad. How is that in any way beneficial to the product being advertised? I am ad tolerant (don't run ad blockers etc) but behaviour like that fills me with rage. It is exactly the same kind of attitude that said it is fine to spew email to anyone whether they want it or not. Marketers need a code of conduct to say that this behaviour is unacceptable.
- chii 13y ago> How is that in any way beneficial to the product being advertised? it isn't. But the clients of the advertisers cannot really have a say in this - the measurements of ad effectiveness tend to be done with impressions. They are optimizing for a metric that doesn't completely align with the goals of advertising
- mistercow 13y agoOr as stated in Goodhart's law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
- chii 13y ago> How is that in any way beneficial to the product being advertised? it isn't. But the clients of the advertisers cannot really have a say in this - the measurements of ad effectiveness tend to be done with impressions. They are optimizing for a metric that doesn't completely align with the goals of advertising
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- slipstream- 13y agoSocialing people to remove adblock?! I'm amazed they don't just social people to download toolbar claiming to fix the "security compromises".
- r00fus 13y agoBecause a) one is already known as being scammy and b) doing the latter might get the site listed as a ad/malware provider, which may run into browser and protection suites labeling the site.
- bencollier49 13y agoDoesn't claiming that Adblock is "malicious" come under the remit of libel laws?
- chalst 13y agoI haven't found that exact claim on the site. It does list these blockers as "Liste von bekannten seitenmanipulierenden Add-ons" (known site-manipulating add-ons) [2] and on the main page "Diese seitenmanipulierenden Add-ons stellen ein erhebliches Sicherheitsrisiko für Sie dar!" (these site-manipulating add-ons put you in a situation of increased security risk) [1]. Together, these two assertions might be libellous, but because they are not together, I guess it is not as straightforward as the words of Michael Büker's post suggests. [1]: http://www.browsersicherheit.info http://www.browsersicherheit.info [2]: http://www.browsersicherheit.info/addons.html http://www.browsersicherheit.info/addons.html
- jruderman 13y agoAd-blockers protect against attacks coming from compromised ad servers, but also increase your total attack surface. The message is misleading about the relative risks, and it's dishonest in singling out ad-blockers among thousands of extensions, but I wouldn't say it's blatantly false. Is it libelous against browser makers, though? They spoof the browser's info bar and I believe they style the landing page to look like an internal browser page.
- inanov 13y ago> The requested URL / was not found on this server. webpages at http://browsersicherheit.info/ http://browsersicherheit.info/ seems to be removed. http://web.archive.org/web/20140226224721/http://www.browsersicherheit.info/addons.html http://web.archive.org/web/20140226224721/http://www.browser... says that adblock "Filters page content"
- inanov 13y agoapparently they just removed the website index http://www.browsersicherheit.info/addons.html http://www.browsersicherheit.info/addons.html
- ehPReth 13y agoYou need the www. bit in the URL. http://www.browsersicherheit.info/ http://www.browsersicherheit.info/ produces the homepage but http://browsersicherheit.info/ http://browsersicherheit.info/ produces a 404
- adrianmn 13y agoAs someone that has been involved in online publishing for over 10 years I have a strong opinion about ad blockers. In my opinion using ad blockers is borderline piracy. Refusing the content creator his revenue by blocking his ads is little different than downloading music, books... without rewarding the creator. On top of that most of the quality content this days is on websites that have decent ads. I am not trying to start a dispute if piracy is good or bad just wanted to express an opinion on ad blockers that many seem to miss.
- mschuster91 13y agoThe problem is that without adblockers the web is basically useless due to too many publishers becoming too greedy and torturing their users with sometimes dozens of layer,banner,popup,popunder and scareware ads on one(!) page.
- adrianmn 13y agoDo you see how that is in perfect connection with the reason people pirate stuff? Anti-piracy main reasoning is that if it's too expensive(too many ads in your case) just don't buy it. The 2nd main reason is lack of availability(in ad blocker case - lack of sites with less ads that give you same content).
- username223 13y agoSo, just serve your "content" from a well-known ad server. That way, adblock will block it, and you get what you want.
- recursive 13y agoI don't use ad blockers, and I disagree with your claim that the web is useless.
- mason240 13y agoI don't use adblockers and have never had any problems.
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- sweedy 13y agosome years ago i worked for 1 & 1, and when I think back to their customers, i can imagine that it would work. And I see the reason also because they were one of the first to have offered in Germany emails that were in vain financed by massive advertising, and AdBlock is certainly no fun for them. Just to compare, this looks my Landing Page with, and without AdBlock.. http://i.imgur.com/bgTCRJN.png http://i.imgur.com/bgTCRJN.png
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- agapos 13y agoWouldn't be possible to sue them for misleading of customers (users) or something similar?
- BrownBuffalo 13y agoThose pesky Germans. Always up to something sneaky.
- hiphopyo 13y agoAre there any ways for websites to bypass AdBlock? Anybody know of any JS projects on GitHub or similar that do this?
- __david__ 13y agoWhat's the point? It's just an arms race you could never win...
- teleclimber 13y agoThis shows very clearly why browser warnings (aka "permission infobars") that are embedded on the page are bad. http://chromespot.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/screen_quota_infobar-630x201.png http://chromespot.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/screen_quot... By getting the user accustomed to seeing browser warnings and info there, you make it impossible for them to distinguish a legit browser warning from a fake one crafted by an unscrupulous site owner. Browser warnings and notifications should significantly overlap the browser chrome (embedded in the address bar for example) so that no web page can make something that looks like it. edit: image link
- frik 13y agoGMX plans to show a fake Firefox warning page, screenshot: http://www.browsersicherheit.info/img/anleitungen/ff_win/firefox_menue.png http://www.browsersicherheit.info/img/anleitungen/ff_win/fir... The GMX website is disrupted by a plugin (orginal: Die GMX Website wird durch ein Plugin gestört) As you can see on their "information campaign" page: http://www.browsersicherheit.info/sicherheit_ff.html http://www.browsersicherheit.info/sicherheit_ff.html They also faked press articles: http://www.browsersicherheit.info/pressestimmen.html http://www.browsersicherheit.info/pressestimmen.html (two websites are related to "1&1"-company and they other one is "Bild")
- mistercow 13y agoThere's only one appropriate response to this from browser vendors: add those sites with to the malicious site list so that they show the big "danger ahead" warning when you visit them. This kind of social engineering approach to removing an extension is not significantly different from a browser exploit that achieves the same result.
- RamiK 13y agoReally a shame for them to resort to such unscrupulous tactics. I quite like 1&1 too. Their mail.com mobile interface ( https://m.mail.com/int/ https://m.mail.com/int/ ) works with NoScript and is perfect as far as my needs are concerned. Quite nice looking too. Very flat and minimal while being completely functional. Such a shame...