Dagens Media: Reklamtrötta reklamproffs ledde till sajt på dark web

Dagens Media in Sweden writes about our travels to the Dark Web: "Reklamsajten Adland har startat en version av sajten på dark web där det är lättare att surfa anonymt." (archive link)

When Apple introduced the opportunity to block advertising on the iPhone, Adland CEO Åsk Wäppling noticed a radical change. The proportion of visitors using ad blockers increased to 65 percent.

As a result, last week she launched a version of the site on the dark web for those users who want to surf completely anonymously. It took her about five minutes to post the site which made her the second major publicist after ProPublica on the dark web. The site has so far had about 3040 visitors.

The important thing is not how many people visit the site without the opportunity, she says.

For her visitors, who largely consist of people in the advertising industry, it's not just about avoiding visible banners. More and more people use ad blockers and other software to avoid malicious code and to ensure that even personal data is not stored and disseminated.

No wonder more people now want to take control of their data. I have been warning about this for over ten years. If the advertising networks had not been so customer-oriented, we probably would not have had these problems with Adblockers now, she says.

According to Åsk Wäppling, ad networks are soon impossible to distinguish from spyware and malicious code.

They have distorted .js, hidden iframes, many redirects, invasive tracking, suspect top-level domains, and save personal data in URLs.