Adblock Plus block ads or just hide them?

Geekspeak (NPR) recently shared a report that legitimate sites have more malware than porno sites etc. and the malware is delivered via ads mostly.

Does the Chrome extension Adblock Plus "block" ads or just "hide" them?

I read reports on it and some state it blocks them and others states it just hide them on the page.

Anyone know? And if not, is there an extension for Chrome to blocks ads to prevent malware from ads?

 

In Firefox it blocks them pretty much all. But for Opera, i know it has to hide some of them because its unable to actually rmeove them. Not sure for Chrome though.

 

It'll block images, scripts, and Flash objects on Firefox.

There's a Malware Domains filter available:
http://adblockplus.org/en/subscriptions

 

There used to be a limitation in Chromium's extensions API which wouldn't let them block ads, they would just hide them, but that situation changed quite sometime ago, and extensions such as Adblock Plus do block ads before they are downloaded. I don't know if such extensions block all ads, or if hide ads in some situations, though.

 

Does it really matter if it blocks them or hides them, either way if you dont see it then it's not likely to click on an add that maybe hosting malware. As far as pornsites goes, there is some truth to that.The ones with High clienttell pulling in millions or billions of dollars a year, yes you bet there is less chance of being infected then lets say free porn tube or any freebie sites that have nothing to lose.

 

I believe it does matter. An infected advertisement doesn't necessarily require you to click on it in order to infect the computer - it can come with a script that'll point the browser to exploit code on a malware site.

It's the script that tries to exploit the browser and infect the computer, and so doesn't require user interaction. If the script is blocked by Adblock, then it can't run.

NoScript is certainly better for protecting against malicious scripts if you can deal with the limitations of using that extension. Adblock is best for ads, but using the Malware Domains list has negligible effect on performance and blocks all the known sites serving malware (which is essentially a reactive approach and can never be 100% effective).

 

Thanks for all the replies. I like it so far - for my routine sites, I noticed no difference in speed. Some Google search results take longer to come-up after clicking on them though.

 

As previously mentioned it does block the ads now from ever downloading and that is very important because you don't have to click on an ad to get infected. The best block lists I have found are Fanboy's Tracking/Stats Blocking (along with Fanboys main list) and Malware Domains, both can be found here - Known Adblock Plus subscriptions, don't use too many lists or you will see a slowdown.

 

Your right I forgot about that if its running but hiding is not the same as block from running.

 

How do you install the lists?

 

if you have adblock installed & enabled simply click on list link in front of subscribe.at least this is how it works for me using firefox.