> 5. Use the most common OS (Windows 10 at the moment) + the most common web browser (Chrome at the moment)
Use the OS with built-in telemetry and the web browser that constantly reports your activity to a data harvesting company and which keeps trying to prevent people from blocking ads or limiting data harvesting on the browser? Try again.
> Do not bother with adblocker - instead use properly configured Chrome with javascript OFF by default, and ON only on trusted sites, use incognito mode, set your own DNS and 204 and some other settings, also use Decentraleyes extension and switch off remote fonts etc
All these same things except...not chrome. It is terrible for privacy. Use firefox with telemetry turned off, or perhaps waterfox, palemoon, or brave. Degoogled chromium may be ok but is not recommended.
> Set text alerts for your card transactions over certain limit
SMS is notoriously bad, and carriers can easily keep old messages. Don't recommend this.
> Who would run a browser specifically designed to track and show ads?
Yeah, I don't understand Chrome users either.
> Edit:
People already do this with mixed success. There's also nothing stopping you from modifying the browser falsely report that the user actually viewed the ads.
Sure. Use a browser whose creator isn't an Ad serving company with a business model built entirely around capturing and analysing massive amounts of product (you. you are the product) data.
>What about non-browser apps on mobile devices or even desktops? Lots of apps have invasive ads and are unlikely to offer an extension api to block them with.
Simple answer: don't use those apps. Do you really need them?
> So use an ad blocker. It's about thirty seconds to set up, and very user-friendly. Even with the default lists, they do a great job.
Have you ever tried to set up ad/tracker blocking for a non-tech person? If it actually protects their privacy, then it's also a huge pain in the ass that randomly breaks things and requires constant attention. DNS- or IP-level blocking works best, but requires constant maintenance. Then there are the various caches. What breaks when you block "*.googleapis.com"? Then there's the question of which user-hostile JavaScript APIs you try to block. WebGL? WebUSB? And from whom? It's endless war.
Question: Is it possible to run ad blocking at the OS level rather than in the browser? Requests to ad servers just never leave your PC? traffic from ad servers just never arrives at the browser?
> If I visit a site for the first time without any ad blocking enabled, and realize it provides no value, how do I reverse my exposure to those ads? How do I claw back whatever data their tracking scripts collected about me?
The exposure you are talking about is a non-issue, particularly given every site you contact has that same information (even without Ads).
If you are concerned about that level of privacy, you should be using https://tails.boum.org or a no logs VPN.
> Websites are able to detect most ad-blockers these days. If they like, they're welcome to deny me access to their content if they see I've blocked the ads.
The better option is to ask the user to turn off their adblocker and explain why (and say that the adverts are vetted for malware properly).
Use the OS with built-in telemetry and the web browser that constantly reports your activity to a data harvesting company and which keeps trying to prevent people from blocking ads or limiting data harvesting on the browser? Try again.
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