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I’m going to admit here and now that I’m an ad blocker fan. I used to not block ads on “free” sites because I understand the way they (writers, journalists, content producers, etc) get paid is either with a fee to the user/readers or with ad dollars.
But as the years went on, the type and amount of ads seemed to increase. Pop-ups made it difficult to navigate sites, flashing ads on the side-rails and even between paragraphs in an article distracted me. But worse yet, some nefarious ads would get through causing my browser to freeze or in worse-case scenarios, accidentally clicking the wrong thing on a nefarious ad would cause my whole computer to freeze up.
I just couldn’t do it anymore so I installed an ad blocker to my browser. Still getting some ads, I installed another one to work alongside it. Still seeing certain types of ads, I now have 3 ad blockers on my browser. For the most part they work well together and I see 98% less ads than I did before.
Well, a certain website I frequent has recently been getting around these blockers with cleverly made pop-up videos that autoplay on their site. While these vids aren’t ads, they are highly annoying and will follow you as you scroll up or down. I got tired of clicking the “x” on every video that would pop up as I tried to read through the articles. None of my current ad blockers were preventing it.
Doing some research I stumbled upon a post where someone mentioned an app/program called AdGuard. They said it has so far successfully prevented those annoying pop-up/auto-play videos on that particular site. So I jumped for it and installed it.
Does it work?
YES!! It works. And it “plays well” with the other ad blockers I currently use so there was no reason for me to uninstall any of the others. Another benefit is that instead of it being a browser add-on, you can install it for Windows, like I did. (Note: They also offer it as a browser extension if you would rather) It was easy to download and install and easy to use. The menu is intuitive and I didn’t have to do any customization in order for it to work. One of the features is that you can customize it to work or not work on certain sites. When you get to a website, it’s quick and easy to pull up the AdGuard menu and tell it whether you want to block ads here, report the website as malicious, and you can even filter it by time (“do not filter for 30 seconds”). Of course, you don’t need to do this on every site you visit since it is defaulted to block ads (that’s why you got it, right?) but it’s nice to have a quick and easy way to toggle it when and if you need it.
How About Mobile Protection?
Yep! AdGuard has a mobile version as well. I haven’t personally tried it out, but when I do, I’ll be sure to give you a review.
Where Can I Get AdGuard (mobile, computer, browser)?
You can learn more about it and download it from their website: https://adguard.com/