Active notifications for known adware

Various discussions related to Adblock Plus development
Post Reply
Lain_13
Posts: 114
Joined: Fri Dec 18, 2009 5:24 pm
Location: Wonderful World, Ubuntu Linux
Contact:

Active notifications for known adware

Post by Lain_13 »

I see a lot of false negative reports caused by various adware installed on the users side. "Fixing" such problems through Adblock is rather pointless and even unethical from my point of view since ABP will attempt to hide real problem and may not prevent all problems caused by adware (especially if it is not just adware but something more malicious). We do have a notification when user tries to send a report but it doesn't seems like presence of well known issue caused by adware prevents user from sending it. A lot of users ignore the warning and send report anyway. In fact many users doesn't even know they can send a report and only Firefox users can in the first place.

I've noticed that users visiting first time site detected by AWRL (warning removal) receiving notification about possible presence of intrusive or misleading adblock detection. So, I thought will it be possible to make a similar list with filters for ads caused by adware and make adblock show warning if any filter in that list will trigger. Warning must contain a link to a page with text similar to this one: https://easylist.adblockplus.org/blog/2 ... or-plugins
It should be localized to all supported languages.

Additionally warning must have an option to disable it from triggering by the same rule.

I think such list will help to resolve two major issues:
1. Reveal to users presence of adware on their system and explain that it's their responsibility to keep their system clean from stuff like this.
2. It will allow to quickly add new detection filters by filterlists maintainers and cover most of the abp users with it instead of sending email with request to add "known issue" and cover only small fraction of adblock users (only curious enough to find and use report issue feature and only on Firefox).
Post Reply