(Ad) Block Shock

A Quick Peak On Ad Blocker Apps And What They Have In Store To Offer You.

Since the month of September 2015, a lot of significant developments and modifications had happened in the digital and technology world.

The launch of Apple iOS, 9 gathered a lot of attention in the news more for the ad blocking feature that iOS 9 possessed than iOS 9’s launch.

Ad blocking apps have become the main talk of the town since then. With new launches happening, new controversies sparking and the ad blocker apps market observing a turmoil.

From a recent report published about ad block and users installing them, it was mentioned that about 200 million people across the globe stops ads, 181 million of whom are on the desktop. Almost USD 22 billion in global ad revenues has been blocked this year so far which represents about 14% of all the global ad budget.

It is to be noted that the key drivers for the users to use ad block applications are as follows:

* Bandwidth Charges,

* Quality and quantity of ads,

* Resulting hits on battery life and

* Extra load time in mobile.

The market of ad block applications are swinging up rapidly. Since its introduction in November 2014, UBlock Origin has grown by 833% and had reached a massive number of users who have downloaded this app. A similar app Adguard AdBlocker also saw a growth of about 231% since inception in a short span of time.

Coming back to Apple, there has been the addition of two new ad block apps on Apple’s app store Peace and Been Choice.

With Apple releasing its iOS 9 support for blockers, Peace became a popular download. But right after one week of iOS 9s’ launch,  developer of Peace, Marco Arment pulled back the app stating ‘It doesn’t “feel good” to offer such a blunt instrument against all ads.’ Soon after that Been Choice was made available on Apple iStore that not only blocks mobile web ads but also ads on the native apps of Apple like Apple News.  Been Choice, however, had a feature that was an alarming cause of concern for every single user who downloads the app.  Been Choice uses a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and sends traffic through its own servers. This can produce latency delay. This app also lets you choose an option that offers you a choice of sharing your data with the app developers in exchange of cash rewards or gifts.

It turns out that you give a lot more data through this option than what ads might trace. Been Choice also installs a “root certificate” so it can block ads.  This root certificate is responsible for letting the software see all of your mobile traffic from emails to bank transactions, pages you visit, videos you watch etc and hence by downloading this app, you are compromising your security on the internet.

Recently this app was removed from Apple iStore as Apple has asked the developers to modify the app. Only time will tell whether such apps are going to get their places back on iStore or will they remain pulled back.