"Ad-tired ad-pros led to ad-site on the dark web" Medievärlden

The headline works far better in Swedish but it was amusing to translate it just to repeat "ad-" thrice in the title here. In Medievärlden today: "Reklamtrötta reklamproffs ledde till sajt på dark web". The interview centers on how readers are ad blocking mainly due to what I believe is privacy issues with ad networks today, and you can read it here.

The site Adland has launched a version of the chat on dark web where it is easier to surf anonymously. This is due to the fact that site visitors want to avoid advertising.


When Apple introduced the ability to block advertising in iPhone, Adland's CEO Åsk Wäppling noticed a radical change. The proportion of visitors using an ad blocker increased to 65 percent.


For this reason, she launched last week a version of the site on the dark web for users who want to surf completely anonymous. It took her about five minutes to put out the site which made her the second major publicist for ProPublica on the dark web. The site has so far had about 30-40 visitors.


-"The important things is not how many people use the .onion site, but that the possibility exists," she says.


For her visitors, which largely consists of people in the advertising industry, it is not just about avoiding visible banners. More people are using advertising blockers and other software to avoid malware and to ensure that their personal data is not stored and disseminated.


- "It is no wonder that more people now want to take control of their data. I have warned about this for over ten years. If advertising networks had not been so botched we probably would not have had these problems with Adblockers now", she says.


According Åsk Wäppling banner ad networks are soon indistinguishable from spyware and malware.


- "They have distorted .js, hidden iframes, many forked redirects, invasive tracking, suspicious TLDs, control data in the URLs...."