Adblocking made waves last summer after Apple announced that it would bake content blocking capabilities into iOS 9. Content blocking lets users filter out content that they don’t want to load, and in this case, it worked with Apple’s Safari web browser. And there’s one kind of content that typically irritates people more than anything else – ads.
So Apple’s content blocking capabilities swiftly lead to adblocking on iOS devices, with many companies developing these apps to help secure and improve people’s web browsing experience. This includes F-Secure, who released a free adblocking app last September.
Now, F-Secure Labs has written up a brief whitepaper explaining, in detail, how F-Secure Adblocker works.
Without getting into too much detail, F-Secure Adblocker basically checks for information about web traffic with F-Secure Security Cloud (a cloud-based service that powers many of F-Secure’s security products). If F-Secure Security Cloud is able to identify the source of web traffic as an advertising server, it lets Adblocker know, and Adblocker can filter out the advertising content, leaving you with the information about sports, news, business, or whatever else you’re browsing for.
Using Adblocker also speeds up your browsing, protects you from malvertising, and saves bandwidth for those of you trying to save money on your data plans. Not bad for a free app. Plus, it all operates in accordance with F-Secure’s Privacy Principles. F-Secure can’t connect the information about your web traffic with anything else about you, so you don’t have to worry about sharing information with companies looking to exploit your personal data.
The paper is a quick easy read and gives you a comprehensive breakdown about how Adblocker works, so it’s worth checking out if you’re interested in learning how products being ad free can improve your web browsing experience.
[Image by Chris Schmich | Flickr]
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