Thieves, liars and cheats

I've been working on methods of earning money on the internet lately, not just for me and my family, but for lots of others who find themselves needing to augment their income while staying at home. Stay-at-home parents, homeschooling parents, parents of children with special needs all have a dire need for avenues for staying economically sound in a two-income economy.

One of the most promising methods has been internet advertising, Google's AdSense at the top of the list. I see people working very hard to provide quality content in order to then be rewarded by the income from the ads on pages containing that content. The vast majority of ads are unobtrusive and don't really get in the way. There have always been those that abuse advertising, using popups or other annoying gimmicks to lure people, but they are the exception.

I share advise and ideas on a message board for AdSense users and recently was informed about AdBlock Plus, which is a FireFox plugin that blocks ads. I installed it, and looked and some of my sites, and sure enough all the Google ads were missing. I researched a little more and found a method of detecting people who use it, and began sending them to a special page that told them exactly what I think about people who take things without paying for them.

But I wanted to do more than that. I wanted to confront these people with the truth that by using this add-on they were stealing. Now the people who make it, and the filters that decide which ads to block are aware of me and are trying to defeat my block. How's that fro hypocrisy. They want people to block ads, but they don't want web site owners to block their plug-in.

So now, it's war. As they attempt to create "work arounds" for my blocks, I work on more comprehensive blocks that will defeat their work arounds. I also am informing other how to block people using the plug-in. The people who wrote the plug-in aren't terribly clever; thieves rarely are. But now they've inspired me, via their arrogance, to make sure a method for defeating their plug-in can be developed and distributed.

To the death of AdBlock Plus.

UPDATE: The script is DONE!! Check this out...

<script>
function dieAdBlockPlusDie()
  {
  var giframe = document.getElementsByTagName("iframe");
  var bod = document.getElementsByTagName("body");
  var blocked=1;
  for (var i = 0; i < giframe.length; i++)
    {
    var name = giframe[i].getAttribute("name");
    if(name == "google_ads_frame")
      {
      var blocked=0;
      }
    }
  if(blocked)
    {
    bod[0].innerHTML = '<p align="center"><font face="Century Gothic"><b>\
This page cannot be displayed because ad blocking software has \
been detected.</b></font></p>';}
  }  
setTimeout('dieAdBlockPlusDie()', 5000);
</script>

 This checks for the presence of the iframe google delivers their ads in. The only way the AdBlock Plus people can defeat this is to allow Google AdSense.

Posted by Danny Carlton at July 27, 2007 6:19 AM