What ad blocker do you guys use Goggle is driving me nuts ,I had feeling about Google and started using their search anyways
I use AdBlock Plus on Firefox.
It won't help on a smartphone though.
Same as Richard.
I use Adblocker plus on top of Chrome and never get any.>>>Dan
I don't have Firefox or Chrome with Chrome being Google never will have it but I will look into FireFox
Me too, firefox and ad blocker
Happy coaching!
Buswarrior
Quote from: luvrbus on December 31, 2019, 04:41:25 PM
I don't have Firefox or Chrome with Chrome being Google never will have it but I will look into FireFox
Right now, I think that all the major browsers, including Microsoft Edge upcoming version, use the Chrome browser engine. Firefox is still independent, and possibly Opera as well. Firefox still has the best selection of add-ons that I have seen. Been using it for 20+ years.
Opera is Google based also firefox is not as well as Bing, Duckduckgo also are independent but Firefox is probably the most safe and up to date. It is run by a bunch of college students that keep up with tech stuff and fix things when needed pretty fast.
Ok I mention Chrome in the post guess what a popup from Chrome geez,I am starting to get paranoid.I think Alexa even ease drops when I mention to the wife should we look into a certain item here comes Amazon I am to old for this
Quote from: Dave5Cs on December 31, 2019, 05:10:51 PM
Opera is Google based also firefox is not as well as Bing, Duckduckgo also are independent but Firefox is probably the most safe and up to date. It is run by a bunch of college students that keep up with tech stuff and fix things when needed pretty fast.
If by Bing you're talking about the Microsoft Edge browser, it's about to go to the dark side soon.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/6/18128648/microsoft-edge-chrome-chromium-browser-changes
Guess that leaves just Firefox if you want a browser that is not based on the Chrome engine. Duckduckgo is only search engine, and while it's a good alternative to Google I don't think that they have a browser yet.
Bing is just another search engine not google or edge. I don't use edge and actually disabled it in my system.
Clifford you need to go into your settings when you get Firefox and pick what you want to do with all the tracking which you can tell it to not track you and may other things. You can get away from google for everything but it takes a Lot of doing and switching to other things that don't connect to it. And yes if you have any of the devises you talk to they can also listen and tract you to and then amazon and google will market to you as well as put it in your file and sell it to other companies.
As of this year California just passed a new law that you can oped out of all these companies that do this and even on some you can request your file and then request what they are and have made off you with your Data information and they will be liable to pay you a sum of money for continuing to do that.
There is a Duck Duck Go extension for Chrome.
https://duckduckgo.com/
Lin don't go through Chrome because that will connect it to Google go right to the site and that way it is not an extention. :)
Seems like we're talking about two different things here - browsers and search engines. Both can affect the tracking situation, but the original question was about ad blocking. Doesn't matter which search engine you use with regard to ad blocking. That all depends on whether or not there is an ad blocking extension available for the browser you're using. There is for Firefox. Not sure about Chrome, but it seems that I've read about them going in the other direction.
I just started to get these ads on right side. Seems this is happening only on this site. Is there something on BCM site settings that is allowing this stuff to get through?
Another thing that helps to thwart the ads that follow your "interests", is simply clearing your browsing and cookie history often.
Something changed a couple days ago. I had been blissfully unaffected by all the changes here but all of a sudden I've got a blank pane down the right side of my screen. So far at least Firefox's ad blocker prevents anything from appearing there but the reading pane got suddenly dramatically narrower. I'll survive. I'll just have to scroll a bit more.
Quote from: bobofthenorth on January 02, 2020, 09:56:03 AM
Something changed a couple days ago. I had been blissfully unaffected by all the changes here but all of a sudden I've got a blank pane down the right side of my screen. So far at least Firefox's ad blocker prevents anything from appearing there but the reading pane got suddenly dramatically narrower. I'll survive. I'll just have to scroll a bit more.
This one I have a (possible) solution to.
On the right side of your screen, just above that right-hand column, there is a very tiny little gray box. If you look closely, you'll see an even tinier minus sign in that little gray box. Click on the minus sign and the right-hand column will disappear.
Yeah, but what is it doing there???
Quote from: chessie4905 on January 02, 2020, 10:41:26 AM
Yeah, but what is it doing there???
Russian training exercise?
Happy coaching!
Buswarrior
Could be tinkering by administrators trying to squeeze more ads on site to generate more revenue. Looks like more tinkering needed.
Wow - now the little gray box is missing. No way to shut off the right-hand column any more over here.
Quote from: richard5933 on January 02, 2020, 04:13:43 PM
Wow - now the little gray box is missing. No way to shut off the right-hand column any more over here.
And we are the beta testers for the Russians...
Comrade, perhaps more than just this same drug company ad all the time, please?
I have good Canadian beer to send...
Happy coaching!
Buswarrior
Google has a place where you opt out of the ad's from other co's but not theirs I opted out of 131 of those it did stop a lot of ads now I am after Google,they (Google) have a browser plug in to control their ads I just haven't figured it out yet
My other forums aren't contaminated like this one.
I have and have had for a long time 2 small ads at the top for years now and they change from time to time and thats it, So the rest of you are not clearing your cashe when you close out your computer. Just sayin..... ;)
Quote from: Dave5Cs on January 03, 2020, 09:30:24 AM
I have and have had for a long time 2 small ads at the top for years now and they change from time to time and thats it, So the rest of you are not clearing your cashe when you close out your computer. Just sayin..... ;)
It's not that simple. I've done all the usual things like you're describing, but the problems are still there.
On the smartphone the Google ad covers half the screen. On the desktop there is a right hand column taking up space and doing nothing. Neither problem has been there before this.
On mine there are 3 grey lines one on top of the other, Its been put there I am guessing by Krash for some reason which creats the block you can see that make the space. right click and hit inspect the element and you will see what I am talking about. On mine it is just a blank space that they are holding maybe for ads later or some picture etc. But for ever on mine it has only been a blank space. Get rid of those grey lines at the top and the space goes away. ;)
And on my Phone I wouldn't care because I never use my smart phone for forum websites unless it is with Tapatalk.
Quote from: Dave5Cs on January 03, 2020, 09:40:35 AM...Get rid of those grey lines at the top and the space goes away. ;)
And on my Phone I wouldn't care because I never use my smart phone for forum websites unless it is with Tapatalk.
There is no longer a way to get rid of those three gray boxes. There was a small gray box you could click, but a few days ago it disappeared. Of course, this right-hand column thing is only an issue on a desktop or laptop. I don't always have access to those when traveling, especially when in the bus.
I used to access this forum on my smartphone via Tapatalk. That stopped working after the upgrade/update last year.
When on the road all I have it the smartphone. I've used that many times in the past to get help while traveling in the bus, and hope to be able to continue doing that. The way it is now, the first screen is filled with ads, and then there are a few screens full of ads at the bottom. Makes things difficult.
I'm seeing ads right now for replacing broken home window glass, and lipstick for mature women. Not exactly bus related or related to anything I have browsed.
Some times when you have a website and use ads your ad service picks them and you only get to check what type of ads you will host. When I had a website I used Amazon and they picked all the ads they put on my site and I could go in a refuse an ad but sometimes they kept right on sending the same ones and that depended on what was trending at the time.
Hey, the Wish site ads here are offering deep discounts on male and female blow up dolls.😂 Seriously though, many ads are here pertaining to your web surfing results.
I could care less what the ads are about. But do they have to cover more screen real estate than the actual content on the mobile version?
Quote from: richard5933 on January 03, 2020, 10:12:25 AM
There is no longer a way to get rid of those three gray boxes. There was a small gray box you could click, but a few days ago it disappeared.
That's probably my fault. You were just trying to help me when you posted that but evidently some eagle eyed webbie spotted the loop hole and closed it. Sorry about that.
Confused by the Google ads though - they don't show for me on the desktop/laptop browser at all, but they are all over the mobile format.
Everything is fine over on BNO, which is layed out similarly.
Just reading through this topic, I can see most (all?) of you are not thrilled by the recent addition of Google ads to the forum. Personally, I don't like Google, and I don't like ads, but accept the necessity of generating some income from this forum to help support BCM. We've tried to make the ads not too obtrusive, but formatting options are pretty limited. Those of you who are seeing grey bars or blank areas are using ad or tracking blockers. Don't know what you see on phones (I don't use a phone). I don't see ads in my primary browser (FF), I'm running several layers of tracking protection and security, been using IE to format the ads. Makes the forum smaller, but doesn't change anything functionally, the ads are placed in portal blocks outside the forum. The ads are supposed to be somewhat related to site content, so some of them may be of interest to some of you. Any comments or suggestions would be welcome.
Quote from: Krash on January 07, 2020, 03:29:19 PM
Just reading through this topic, I can see most (all?) of you are not thrilled by the recent addition of Google ads to the forum. Personally, I don't like Google, and I don't like ads, but accept the necessity of generating some income from this forum to help support BCM. We've tried to make the ads not too obtrusive, but formatting options are pretty limited. Those of you who are seeing grey bars or blank areas are using ad or tracking blockers. Don't know what you see on phones (I don't use a phone). I don't see ads in my primary browser (FF), I'm running several layers of tracking protection and security, been using IE to format the ads. Makes the forum smaller, but doesn't change anything functionally, the ads are placed in portal blocks outside the forum. The ads are supposed to be somewhat related to site content, so some of them may be of interest to some of you. Any comments or suggestions would be welcome.
On my Android smartphone, running a stock Chrome browser, the Google ads fill up far more screen space than the content. Here are most (but not all) of the ads presently showing.
With the number of duplicate sds, I'm guessing that there is a problem with the coding on this.
When Tapatalk support ended, it was still possible to use the forum through a mobile browser with relative ease thanks to the mobile formatting. With the addition of the Google sds, I would rate the site as no longer functional for those accessing via mobile.
Too bad, since that's often my only method of accessing the forum, especially when on the road in the bus.
Looking at it in FF mobile emulations, it drops all portal blocks to bottom of page, that's where the ads should be. You're seeing ads up top below forum header. I'd venture a guess they display differently on different phones. Makes formatting difficult if it's not consistent on different devices.
I get the same results in FF for mobile. Google ad at the top just under the two smaller ads (that have always been there), and then gobs of them at the bottom. The screen shots I sent were the actual things I'm seeing on my end.
None of the Google ads I'm seeing are relevant to the content or to my browsing history.
There is a mobile emulator available on Chrome.
Update:
Interestingly, I just switched my mobile FF to show me the desktop site. It showed as it should. Then when I switched back to the mobile version the Google ad at the top was not there and there were far fewer at the bottom. Strange since I purge the cache daily. Not sure what happened.
In pc view there should be three ads stacked in right sidebar, and one across bottom. FF mobile emulators show all four stacked at bottom. I don't actually see the ads, just the title bars, but they're all where they should be. I've found emulators to not be 100% reliable. There are several things in play here, including variations in browser renderings, quirks of the not very good responsive Curve mod, Google's persistent efforts to push their ads up front.
When I have some time, maybe I'll install a responsive theme and see how it works. That could solve a lot of problems.
Remind me again why tapatalk doesn't work with BCM?
BGM, BNO, my Ram forum, all do tapatalk?
My bet is a lot of members are trying to use phones, especially when on the road, uses less data...
The "reply" line is often staying at the top of the thread, and not at the bottom, after the lat message on my android powered Blackberry key 2.
Thank you for staying after this.
Happy coaching!
Buswarrior
Tapatalk works, but it's a huge security risk and not recommended for use with SMF.
Quote from: buswarrior on January 09, 2020, 02:31:46 PM
Remind me again why tapatalk doesn't work with BCM?
BGM, BNO, my Ram forum, all do tapatalk?
My bet is a lot of members are trying to use phones, especially when on the road, uses less data...
The "reply" line is often staying at the top of the thread, and not at the bottom, after the lat message on my android powered Blackberry key 2.
Thank you for staying after this.
Happy coaching!
Buswarrior
BGM just did a big update, and in the process support of Tapatalk was discontinued. They have a pretty good mobile theme available, but I miss Tapatalk...