by self regualate, they mean "Find new ways to do the same thing, makeing it sound better"

All we need is a ground war in Asia to cull our populations to below the level that our society produces parasites like these.

They even prey on each other, how many organsisations all doing the same thing?

Na, hand to hand combat with physical weapons in some 3rd world country will do the trick

The Human Race needs to clean up its act and either kill them all or find a way to target their excess population to our advantage.

Maybe sacrifise them all to all the Gods we can think of? One of them may be real.

that the Golgafrincham B Ark is merely the subject of fiction.

With self regulation there is little if any trust, with government regulation would I trust them more? Er, No.

As the Big Yin has suggested Adblock and NoScript are wonderful addons.

Blocking (for the UK) *.doubleclick.net*, *.quantserve.com*, *.atdmt.com*, *.adbrite*, ads.*, adserver.*, *googlesyndication* and *google-analytics* at least. Not accepting cookies if it can be helped, and never accepting 3rd party cookies will stop the vast majority of the invasive and privacy compromising elements of the Internet.

Some people like seeing advertisements, for me one is too many.

"People are so smug and lofty and dramatic and human-rights-ish about ads. 'If I see one ad for anything then I have to poke out my own eyes and eat them.' Do you? Really?"

No, but I do think of poking out the advertisers eyes, sauteing them in a nice garlic butter with some panther cap mushrooms and and feeding them to the marketeers whom employ them.

"Do you think about these things at all beyond your own mild irritation?"

No, should I? I guess I do a little bit... Eliminate Internet advertising and most of the chaff would disappear from the WWW. If a website has content which is worthy of note, a website such as The Register, I would have no problem in paying an annual subscription. If a third rate website went under because people were unwilling to pay for the content then so be it.

Advertising is so ubiquitous these days, most people do not see it as an invasion of their psyche. I just don't want the visuals or jingles from products I do not want nor care about inside my head, even if only for an instant. Those neural pathways that are forged by exposure to advertising are wasted, perhaps never to be employed for useful purpose. Even the tinfoil hat doesn't help protect from mind control via the optical nerve or auditory canal.

Just as advertisers feel they have a right to expose the public to products EVERYWHERE, often in the most attention grabbing and invasive ways imaginable, I feel I have a right to prevent my exposure to such wherever and whenever possible. A right which I will continue to actively pursue. There is a feeling of satisfaction I get when I successfully block an avenue of advertising TPS, MPS, Adblock, NoScript which would never be equaled by seeing or hearing that which I have blocked.

concidering some of the pepol you have to put up with on here I would say you have a very hi tolrance

It is only 3rd party ads that people feel they need to block. As those adverts can be hosting scripts that may be doing something injurious to the computer or harvesting personal data that we would rather keep private. Everyone has different awareness settings by which they minimise perceived risks.

Sites that host ads don't get their ads blocked.

Just because you are complacent about the inherent risks in 3rd party content does not give you an excuse to belittle the response of those who are more experienced with the seriousness of the risk than you are. (Have you noticed how even the police now only work in pairs and are wearing knife jackets while Joe Public goes about in t-shirts? Protected by ignorance, perhaps, but still the victim of knife crime.)

It is not the adverts that people don't want so you are with the crowd in that. If it were there would be some very unhappy shareholders and your ability to discover content hosted on the internet would be severely restricted.

Mmm. And you're OK with deep packet inspection, then? Regardless?

Sarah,

I don't think it's the ads per se that bother people - you can block them if you wish.

For me it's the feeling of being profiled and monitored for everything i do. A far as i'm concerned, what i do is my business. Information about what I do is not yours to sell at a profit to someone else, unless I explicitly consent to it.

The thing that irks a lot of people is that companies like Phorm just assume that it is and 'take' what they like.

(El)Fatbob

I block ads for the same reason as the BigYin, because I found the pop-ups and flashing ads to be objectionable. Of course, this then made me aware of the bigger issues of privacy and tracking of browsing habits, so the ad people have only themselves to blame for the fact that I do my best to stomp on any attempt to track what I'm doing. On the bright side, it's also helped make me more aware that governments do the same thing, and while they have access to techniques that advertisers shouldn't, it does instil a certain level of net hygiene to make it more difficult for them. Given the number of trojans and other nastyware that have been propagated via hacked ad servers, blocking them on principle is also good security practice.

You know how us geeks don't like the use of "unlimited" and how it gets bandied about to sell broadband services? You know how there has been complaints (real and on-line rants) about it near constantly since ISPs stopped doing unlimited accounts, and started with their AUPs and other such BS?

The reason why this still flies is that the advertising industry in the UK is self regulated. The ASA in not governmental, and is totally funded by the advertising industry. And it is clear from things like on-line comments that many people think the ASA is real regulation. It is not, and people must be made aware of it. If you have a problem with an advert, go straight to OFCOM.

Funded by the ad industry really means funded by the customers of the ad industry, and these days communication is very profitable to advertisers. It is no wonder that "unlimited" is still used.

It makes you wonder what other industries routinely lie and the ASA let it fly. There's a lot of car insurance ads on British TV, I wonder just how BS-packed they are?

These days I even mute the TV when the adverts come on. Since the whole volume thing with TV ads, you'll end up reaching for the remote to turn the volume down during ads.... why not just hit mute (or pause on a PVR)?

And muting the TV adverts really makes the mindless consumers identify themselves. Several times I have muted a TV when a friend of a friend is in the room, and the question of why the sound has gone off varies from just an gormless inquiry to plain hostility!