Top 4 Chrome ad blockers that you need to know about

[harlan4096]

Best Ad Blockers for ChromeAds are one of the biggest annoyances that you will come across while surfing the internet. Websites place ad banners, and when visitors view the ads or interact with them, it earns the site revenue.  Nearly every website has ads, even big ones like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, etc.  Why? Because it costs money to operate website.

But the real cost here is your privacy, you are exposing your personal data to the websites if left unchecked? The workaround for this is simple, install an ad blocking solution. Which one should you pick?

Here are the best ad blocker extensions for Chrome, that prevent ads to keep you safe, without hampering the system’s performance.

Stay safe from malware and block ads with these must have Chrome extensions

• uBlock Origin - The top ad blocker of our choice, and the most efficient ad blocker
  
• AdGuard AdBlocker -  Simple, highly configurable ad blocking solution with a modern interface
  
• Sponsor Block–  Blocks sponsored segments in YouTube videos.
  
• uMatrix – Powerful content and script blocker for advanced users
  

List of Chrome ad blocker extensions to browse the web without being trackeduBlock Origin main features & specifications summary

• Rating: 5/5
  
• Browser compatibility: Chrome, Firefox, Safari & Brave
  
• Pricing: Free (open source)
  
• Features: Ad blocking, prevents trackers, blocks Javascript
  

uBlock Origin pros & cons

Pros

• Protects you from being tracked by advertisements
  
• Disables ad banners without leaving blank spaces
  
• Saves data by blocking ads
  
• Many user lists that you can subscribe to block various ads, trackers
  
• Custom filters to block elements on websites
  
• Pages load faster
  
• Open Source
  
• Light on resources
  

Cons

• Slightly complex interface compared to AdGuard
  
• Does not prevent affiliate URLs from tracking you.
  
• You may have to toggle the add-on, or purge the cache if web pages aren’t rendering properly, e.g. if a web page’s menu is not working.
  

When you visit a web page or perform a search query, your browser stores some information about it in the form of a cookie. Many sites use this data, i.e. to find what you like, products you may be interested in, to display advertisements that are relevant to your online activity, aka targeted ads. So if you searched about cars or televisions, you will see ad banners about these on many sites that you visit.

This can be annoying to see, and your browsing habits are also tracked by the ad server. That is creepy and dangerous. Some web services have come under scrutiny for harvesting user data, and even selling them to third-parties. uBlock Origin blocks the ads automatically, allowing a greater control over your privacy.

Many good articles often look terrible, because the site placed an ad after every paragraph or on the sides. Just imagine how nice the page could look, if there weren’t any of these annoyances. uBlock Origin gives you a cleaner version of web pages, that is devoid of distractions, trackers and malicious scripts, without breaking the site. You don't even need a separate pop up blocker for Chrome.

If you watch videos on YouTube, you may have noticed that some of them start with an ad, that is usually skippable after a certain amount of seconds..

These can ruin the experience, sometimes can be really loud or just plain annoying or irrelevant. You can avoid video ads with uBlock Origin, and you don’t even need to set it up to do this, the extension blocks all these ads right out of the box.

But all things said, uBlock Origin is more than an ad-blocker, it is a spectrum wide content blocker. What that means is that it can be used to block Javascript from running, which further reduces the amount of trackers that try to obtain your personal data. Besides you can also use it to manually block content on websites, using the Element Picker. These advanced features make other add-ons like noScript, Privacy Badger, and the like, redundant.

uBlock Origin uses filter lists maintained by volunteers, this is how the plugin detects requests to ad servers, and blocks them before a web page is loaded.

In addition to this, there are loads of optional filter lists that you can select, to improve the ad detection and blocking rate.

Have you ever run into a site that asks you to disable your ad blocker, well you shouldn’t disable the extension. Instead, go to uBlock Origin’s settings, and toggle the annoyance filter list, this will block the anti-adblock script that the web page uses. This way your privacy isn’t compromised, and you can access the content, just like the way the free internet is meant to be.

Try visiting a web page without an ad-blocker, and then once again this time with uBlock Origin installed. You’ll literally feel the difference, without the plugin, the sites will open slower and your computer also uses more resources to load the page. With the ad blocker installed, the number of elements that are needed to be loaded are reduced, which in turn results in pages being rendered faster, and the load on the system performance is lighter too.

Take some time to read the extension’s documentation, learn how to use the advanced options, and you will have a really powerful content blocker at your disposal.

For more information regarding uBlock Origin, read our review.

Download the uBlock Origin extension for Chrome here.
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