Edward Snowden: It is your &lsquo;duty&rsquo; to install ad-blockers

Edward Snowden, the government surveillance whistleblower, is advising people to use ad-blockers for their own security, citing a rising trend in ‘malvertising’ and the vulnerability of service from Internet providers. Snowden also explains that ad-supported pages contain numerous trackers and cookies collecting user data for advertising purposes, which has led to an increase in adoption of ad-blockers.  

Edward Snowden's embrace of the free flow of information apparently doesn't apply to online ads.

In an interview(opens in a new tab) with The Intercept, the government surveillance whistleblower gave some advice on how average citizens can shield their privacy online. One of the less obvious security tips: flip on an ad blocker.

Everybody should be running adblock software, if only from a safety perspective …

We’ve seen internet providers like Comcast, AT&T, or whoever it is, insert their own ads into your plaintext http connections. … As long as service providers are serving ads with active content that require the use of Javascript to display, that have some kind of active content like Flash embedded in it, anything that can be a vector for attack in your web browser — you should be actively trying to block these. Because if the service provider is not working to protect the sanctity of the relationship between reader and publisher, you have not just a right but a duty to take every effort to protect yourself in response.

Snowden has a point: So-called "malvertising" attacks -- in which ad networks play unwitting host to harmful files disguised as ads -- have been on the rise over the past several months, even infecting popular websites like Yahoo.

Credit: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Additionally, most news sites and other ad-supported webpages employ dozens of trackers and cookies that tally away information about personal web browsing habits for advertising purposes.

Documents leaked by Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency has collected information directly from the data centers of Google and Yahoo by tapping links between the companies' servers.

Such security concerns have contributed to the growing popularity of ad blockers in the past couple years. A report(opens in a new tab) from Adobe and PageFair, a company that helps publishers circumvent ad blockers, pegs the number of active ad block users at nearly 200 million worldwide -- a 41% increase from the year before.

The trend is worrying for publishers who rely on advertising for their livelihood, and some argue that it's unethical for readers to skip out on an "implied contract" that supplies them with free content in exchange for putting up with ads. Ad block proponents counter that the real ethical transgression is forcing visitors to view ads that drain excessive amounts of bandwidth and may even serve as a conduit for malware.

But the issue is also complicated by the fact that many ad blockers are actually more porous than the name implies. Eyeo GmbH, the German software developer behind the popular ad blocking extension AdBlock Plus, lets through certain so-called "acceptable ads" that meet a set of non-intrusive criteria -- some of which are paid for by companies like Microsoft, Google and content farm Taboola.

The similarly named extension AdBlock and popular mobile ad blocking app Crystal have also signed on to use Eyeo's whitelist.

An analysis(opens in a new tab) by researchers at Pennsylvania State University this year found that the number of whitelisted advertisers has grown rapidly since Eyeo launched the list in 2011, and the lack of transparency means that it isn't always clear why some advertisers are allowed through and others aren't.

Ghostery, an extension designed to detect and fend off trackers and cookies, has its own opt-in feature(opens in a new tab) that collects anonymized data on the trackers you encounter which the company then sells to advertisers.

Still, most ad blockers also come with options to close these loopholes, and on the whole, they can serve to tighten online security as Snowden says.

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BONUS: Is ad blocking wrong?