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In function two of this series on the country of advertizing blockers, I take a look at a new production from a well-known company whose earlier product has been available for well-nigh a decade: Adblock Plus (ABP). Adblock Plus develops extensions for web browsers which can block tracking, malware sites, and, of course, ads.

Last calendar week, ABP went beyond releasing extensions and launched a standalone Adblock Browser for Android and iOS that has congenital-in blocking capabilities. Before nosotros take a look at the browser itself, it is worth noting ABP'south interesting (and some phone call it controversial) business model. ABP signs contracts with companies that agree to its acceptable ads guidelines. Ads from these companies are allowed to pass through the ABP ad filter.

In a 2022 interview, ABP lead investor Tim Schumacher said that only the largest companies pay for these contracts. "Adblock Plus has been experimenting with unlike models," he said. "I tin't talk about specific contracts, but in some cases it was performance-based and in other cases it was more of a flat fee. More than that ninety% of companies don't pay at all."

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The first thing you should know about the free Adblock Browser is that, unsurprisingly, it works better on contempo devices with faster processors. For example, it ran slowly on an iPad 2 with a 32-bit processor in my tests. And so, wearisome, in fact, that there is non much speed reward to using Safari with ads displayed. Nonetheless, on a iPhone 6+ with a faster 64-chip processor, Adblock Browser rendered the by and large ad-less web pages fast enough to exist interesting and useful. On the Android side, I tested information technology using a Nexus iv and Nexus half-dozen.

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Here's the use case that makes Adblock Browser interesting and useful for me: I generally apply Google'south own Chrome browser on Android devices and read spider web pages with ads. However, I ofttimes detect interesting news items in my Google Now feed. And, some of the sources are either unfamiliar to me with peradventure heavy handed ads or are from interesting sources with known heavy ads. So, I take links from Google Now handled by Adblock Browser.

A single ad blocking filter is selected by default: ABP's own EasyList. ABP describes it as: "The EasyList subscriptions are lists of filters designed for Adblock Plus that automatically remove unwanted content from the internet, including annoying adverts, bothersome banners and troublesome tracking. The subscriptions are currently maintained past four authors." You can use the Advertizing Blocking setting pick to choose filters for other languages.

The "More than blocking options" page lets you select options such as disabling tracking. Surprisingly, the option to disable malware domains is turned off by default.

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The "Acceptable Ads" option is turned on by default. As I noted before, this allows ads to be displayed from companies who sign a paid or free contract with ABP to agree to brandish not-intrusive ads.

Finally, in the Privacy settings window, you can choose to turn off cookies and tracking (which are, past default, allowed). It also provides controls for remembering passwords (off by default), and clearing individual data manually. In that location is also an option to clear the cache upon a manual leave using the Quit option. Still, I didn't meet a Quit option in the Android app, and I didn't come across this cache setting in the iOS app.

It is worth noting a few differences betwixt the iOS and Android versions of Adblock Browser. The iOS version lets you cull betwixt DuckDuckGo (the default) and Google every bit its search engine. You lot can choose from a much larger listing of search engines in the Android version. URL suggestions are turned off by default, but tin be turned on. The Android version has a large number of display options, including enabling zoom on pages that normally do not allow zooming on mobile devices. The Android version too has an option to salve a spider web folio as a PDF file (Settings -> Page -> Save every bit PDF).

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The recently released free Adblock Browser for iOS and Android makes it like shooting fish in a barrel for non-technical people to reduce the number of mobile web ads they see and protect themselves from known malware sites. It is 1 more tool that makes it easier for anyone to have an arguably improved mobile web experience.

If you missed part one in this series, check out: Advertisement blocking for the masses, part one: uBlock Origin. Finally, stay tuned for function three, where we will take a closer await at Apple's Content Blocking Safari Extensions that will be fabricated available in the iOS 9 update released September 16.