In my opinion, anyone with any sense will configure their web browser to limit the amount of junk found on websites. There are many risks and dangers associated with computer viruses and other forms of infection, and limited such nonsense is one of many ways to reduce that risk. Thus, IMHO, anyone with any sense of digital security will ensure their browser has an advert suppressor, amongst other things. Of course, an advert suppressor also has the advantage of removing a great source of bad taste, especially design clash, but that’s beside the point for now.
The core problem with adverts is that it is not the website hosts (webhosts) who create them, so they do not have full control over their content. Thus they risk distributing adware, malign content posing as adverts. This is nothing new; adverts have a long history of abuse.
The consequences of digital infection can be enormous. It’s not just the risk of loss of privacy, losing data, or having to pay a ransom. Cryptocurrency can be stolen. Governments can lose billions. People can die. Yet certain webhosts demand visitors drop perfectly reasonable precautions against such consequences.
Thus any individual with a sense of online safety or security blocks adverts. There is also the problem that a product that is advertised is, by the very nature of being advertised, not up to scratch, but that’s beside the point. If there were no such thing as adware, if advert design never clashed with host site design, I’d accept them. I accept webhosts need to pay their way, and am happy to do my bit to do just that, but not by increasing the risk of me becoming a victim of criminality.
Denying adverts may run counter to the interest of the webhosts, because they want to fund their website, and advertisers pay webhosts to promote their nonsense. Of course, there are many other way to cover website costs, but many webhosts depend on advertising, despite the risks it imposes on more naïve visitors. Unfortunately, some of these webhosts have decided to attempt to force people who visit their website to apply poor security practice by accepting adverts, so making it easier for criminals to corrupt those visitors’ systems. Bluntly, they can f*ck off: they should be applying other means to raise money from visitors, rather than aiding criminals commit infection.
On thing that particular galls me is that those sites that insist that visitors drop their security offer no guarantee of compensation in case of infection. These webhosts do not take responsibility for their policies. They are irresponsible. IMHO, insisting on adverts without providing a means of restitution in case of infestion is unethical. It also risks damanging the webhosts’s reputation, which is not in their interest, because it suggests that either their senior management is a bit lacking of understanding of reputation, or the webhosts are in a precarious financial situation, never of which I’d have thought they want to be broadcast!
As you can see, I suspect, in most cases, this forced advert policy is from naïvity, but, clearly, in some cases, it will be malign. I sometimes wonder whether some webhosts are bribed by criminals to enfore advertising to ease infection.
The webhosts insist people take adverts, but fail to guarantee those adverts’ good behaviour. If they, for example, only pushed text adverts, or scanned and checked any advert for security misbehaviour, that would be one thing, but to blindly trust the adverts’ authors, or their agents, is, bluntly, not merely naïve, but dangerously so.
I do understand the webhosts’ problem: they need to pay for their website. Unfortunately, paying for their website by otherwise insisting visitors risk infection by bad actors, without providing restitution, is not acceptable. A genuine paywall is a reasonable solution; pay up or see nothing, rather than pay up or risk becoming a victim of criminal activity. Another solution is a mechanism to sample a website, attached to a paywall to see the rest. There are many other possibilities that don’t involve aiding criminal activity.
Until now, when I encouter a website trying to promote infection like this, I avoid it, but too many webhosts are jumping on this bandwagon of infection. From now on, I’m going to go further; at the very least I’ll note their name here. In the future, I intend to draft a series of questions, then contact the organisation to find out whether they realise what they’re actually doing, and how they’s they’d refund victims of their naïve policies.