Ads may take up a lot of space in the browser, but they are also bad for user privacy. Not only that, but recent reports indicate that ad blockers help keep users safe from cybercriminal attacks – ‘malvertising’ malware that appears as an ad. If you want a safe and fast web browsing experience, here are the best ad blockers for a web browser.
5 Best Ad Blocker Extensions
uBlock Origin
uBlock Origin is known as the best ad blocker for web browsers. It’s free and open source and works with many built-in web browsers, including Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Opera, and even Safari. Lead developer Raymond Hill actively maintains this. UBlock Origin is the most memory-efficient of all ad blockers and consumes much fewer CPU resources.
It includes multiple filter lists such as EasyList, EasyPrivacy, Peter Lowe’s Blocklist, Online Malicious URL Blocklist, and its own uBO filter lists for blocking ads. This means that trackers, coin miners, intrusive popups, annoying anti-blockers and malware sites are also blocked as soon, and they’re not just ads uBlock Origin blocks them all.
Adblock Plus
Adblock Plus is very popular with customers of all folds as a desktop extension that blocks ads on browsers. You can access it from Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Edge. In addition to blocking ads on a website, it also prevents YouTube ads and pop-ups.
The extension gets ad banners, video ads, and malware that pretend to be ads. This also frees up valuable resources while increasing the browser’s performance.
AdBlock
AdBlock is also a popular ad blocker for browsers. It works by blocking ads on almost all websites, yet it can also block videos on YouTube. While Google is clearly trying to crack down on many YouTube ad blockers, AdBlock has still found a few workarounds to make it work.
AdGuard
All you need is AdGuard as a DNS resolver, and it’s also an extension to block ads on browsers. It eliminates intrusive ads and the elements that make your web page annoying. AdGuard does block all that — from banners, popups, and video ads to malicious ads.
It provides built-in browser security and doesn’t let you visit phishing or malicious sites. No, adblocker doesn’t block web analytics tools and online trackers—it does that, too.
Privacy Badger
If you are concerned about online privacy, you must try Privacy Badger. It’s an Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) extension designed to preserve user privacy on the web. It’s not an ad blocker but a granular invisible tracker blocker for the web. Though it does so, it also prevents all ads from loading since most ads and scripts are hidden as third-party trackers.
Privacy Badger can deny consent through Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control and does send a denial of consent. But they still do when sites still track you, this time the extension blocks them straight away. If you’d rather have a privacy tool than an ad blocker, then Privacy Badger is for you.
