Adblock Plus and (a little) more

Get antisocial to protect your data. · 2018-04-12 13:50 by Tom Woolford

Adblock Plus shows how to disable social media sharing buttons to stop social networks tracking you off site.

Adblock Plus 3.0.3 for Chrome, Firefox and Opera rolled out progressively · 2018-04-10 15:01 by Sebastian Noack

Install Adblock Plus 3.0.3 for Chrome
Install Adblock Plus 3.0.3 for Firefox
Install Adblock Plus 3.0.3 for Opera

This is the first combined release for Chrome, Opera and Firefox since the troublesome migration to Firefox Web Extensions. This marks a major release for Chrome and Opera, notably including the redesigned Settings page, along with many other improvements. However, there isn’t as much an impact for Firefox users, updating from the previous version. It’s mostly a bug fix release for them.

This release will be rolled out progressively. Today, we started to update 5% of our existing Chrome users. New users installing Adblock Plus from the Chrome Web Store will get the latest version as well. If all goes well, we will push the update out to Firefox, Opera and the remaining Chrome users next week. The reason for rolling this release out in stages is that we want to ensure the new Settings page design is well received.

Changes

Improved element hiding emulation filters.
- Fixed false positives and related memory leak in dynamically changing documents (issue 5864).
- Added regular expression support for :-abp-contains() (issue 6034).
- Added support for relative prefix within :-abp-has() (issue 6296).
Fixed empty error message when adding invalid custom filter (issue 6417).
Removed the social media buttons from the ABP icon menu (issue 5613).

Chrome/Opera-only changes

Replaced the Settings page with new user experience (issue 6403).
Added an update page, announcing the new Settings page (issue 5943).
Added an issue reporter for inaccurately blocked content (issue 5880).
Started using user style sheets on Chrome 66 (respectively Opera 53) and above, in order to hide elements more reliably (issue 242).
Fixed element hiding emulation filters on Chrome 50 (respectively Opera 37) and below (issue 5773).
Made the “Block element” option unavailable when navigating to the Chrome Web Store (issue 6191).
Worked around limitations of notifications on Opera (issue 5354).

Firefox-only changes

Fixed a bug causing pages to be rendered blank when Web Components are enabled (issue 6441).
Fixed the “Block element” dialog on Firefox 51 (issue 6113).
Fixed links in the mobile Settings page, seen on Android (issue 6199).
Fixed: Message about whitelisted domain is shown repeatedly on the Settings page (issue 6420).
Improved performance when adding large number of custom filters (issue 6440).

Update (2018-04-18): We proceeded with the progressive roll out, making the update available to all Chrome users. The update for Firefox and Opera will still follow.

Update (2018-04-21): Yesterday, we pushed out the update to Firefox users, but did a mistake which lead to releasing Adblock Plus 3.0.4, today. We also just pushed out the update to Opera users.

The AdBlockChain and how you can become part of it · 2018-04-01 14:16 by Laura Dornheim

It’s not a secret anymore, every tech expert and presumably all of you know that blockchain is the game-changing technology that will revolutionise almost every industry.
Cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have become mainstream and some predict they will soon replace traditional, paper-based currencies.
At Adblock Plus, we’ve always been on the forefront of new digital developments.

Malvertising: The problem, and the very obvious solution. · 2018-03-27 15:00 by Tom Woolford

Simple virus checking isn’t enough. Viruses can now hide in ads, and you may not know until it’s too late!

Adblock Plus for Samsung Internet 1.1.4 released · 2018-03-27 13:44 by Mario König

Install Adblock Plus for Samsung Internet 1.1.4

Changes

Fixed a bug that caused Adblock Plus for Samsung Internet to crash on some devices. (Issue 6454)

Adblock Plus development builds for Firefox moved to new location · 2018-03-24 16:30 by Sebastian Noack

Mozilla is going to drop support for beta versions from AMO, which means we’ll need to go back to distributing the development builds of Adblock Plus for Firefox ourselves. Furthermore, Mozilla will force existing beta users to be automatically updated to the stable version. So if you want to keep using the development build of Adblock Plus for Firefox you’ll need to re-install it from it’s new location.

Cambridge Analytica, Facebook, Your Data and You · 2018-03-22 14:50 by Tom Woolford

Adblock Plus discusses the Facebook / Cambridge Analytica data scandal, and what you should do to keep your data safe.

What you can block with Adblock Plus, part 2 (video) · 2018-02-21 14:00 by Ben Williams

Ever been marooned at an ads conference where people are throwing around words and alphabet soup acronyms that have no meaning? Even if you rather wouldn’t, it’s helpful to understand this jargon so you can understand your surroundings on the web. So today we got some help from Professor Ads, who defined for us just one of these terms … the “interstitial” in a new video.

Adblock Plus for Samsung Internet 1.1.3 released · 2018-02-20 10:20 by Mario König

Install Adblock Plus for Samsung Internet 1.1.3

Changes

Implemented feature to update all selected subscriptions manually. (Issue 6066)
Fixed bug that could cause changed settings to not be applied. (Issue 6289)
Adjusted filter list downloads to distinguish between Yandex Browser and Samsung Internet. (Issue 6187)
Updated translations for new features. (Issue 6345, Issue 6335, Issue 6376)

What you can block with Adblock Plus, part 1 · 2018-02-08 14:45 by Ben Williams

For readers of this blog, it’s probably pretty obvious what all you can block with ABP. Or is it? We’d like to provide our users — from those who know it all to all the newbies out there — as well as people who don’t use an ad blocker yet, with a series of blog posts detailing what you can do with ABP. First up, the crux of the biscuit: ADS.