this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2025
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Some ads have used browser exploits to infect visitors in the past. So this is a very, very bad idea, if it actually is implemented in a way that is hard to filter for ad networks.
So the way I understand this to work, it's 100% safe from the type of attack you're describing.
You are clicking the link (asking the advertiser for the data) but then never actually fetching it.
So you can never get the malicious payload to be infected.
Im too scared to trust it works out fine in the end to use it, been raised on the idea that interacting with an ad in any way other than task managering the pop up is dangerous. Wheres the part of the code that makes it safe and a write up of how it functions, otherwise im fine just blocking ads with regular ublock.
the part that's safe is in the browser. it's a basic fact of how http requests work that you can just request data and then not read it.
also, "task managering the popups"? unless i've missed some very weird development that has literally never worked, because popup windows are part of the parent process.
Back on Windows 95 through XP, each individual window was a process that could be killed in Task Manager, and popups opened in a new window.
really? sounds like a weird span of systems considering they share so little code. i'd like to read on how they did that.
It's wholly incorrect.
I was fairly young, but I do remember using Windows 95 or 98 with Netscape and there were popups that had to be killed through the task manager (or equivalent, it was 30 years ago, so I don't remember precisely).