For the last three columns, I’ve been talking about security concerns surrounding online advertising and what you can do to protect your online privacy.
An aunt of mine called me in a mild panic recently. She had just read the last column and was a little worried about all these advertising companies tracking her and generally poking their unwanted noses into her online business.
While listening to her, I started thinking that like many people nowadays, my aunt doesn’t browse the web over a desktop browser. She uses an app of some variety, or a mobile browser. In fact, many of us now conduct our online lives over some sort of mobile device – either a smartphone or a tablet.
As I assuaged her fears, I realised that in all this talk of protecting online privacy, I’d completely missed talking about mobile ad blocking and how to keep ads off a mobile device.
AndroidIf you use an Android device, then ad blocking has been around for a while. A quick search in the Play Store will show you a range of ad blockers you can download. You could also download and use browsers such as the Ghostery browser or the Adblock Plus browser. These browsers will do a good job of blocking ads; they won’t, however, block ads that show up in other apps.
For complete ad-blocking effectiveness, you can download and install the Adblock Plus app. This app is not available on the Play Store, so to download it, you will need to visit the Adblock Plus website on your mobile device and then install the app. It takes a few minutes to configure, but once that’s done, it will effectively block ads at the system level. This is my preferred option for Android.
iOSUntil very recently, ad blocking was not possible on iOS devices. Your only options were to use browsers such as Adblock Plus or Ghostery. The Ghostery browser doesn’t just block ads however; it also shows you which companies are tracking you on the sites you visit. All this is moot with the launch of iOS 9 in mid-September. The latest version of iOS now allows system-level ad blocking. This means that with the right app, you will be able to block almost every ad. Ads that are published by Apple’s in-house iAd publishing system won’t be blocked, however. Take a look on the App Store to find an ad-blocking app that works for you.
Finally, there are two more things you can do to better secure your privacy on iOS:
Limit Ad Tracking
Go to Settings > Privacy > Advertising
Turn on Limit Ad Tracking
Turn off Location-Based Ads
Go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services > System Services
Turn off Location-Based iAds
Once you’ve started blocking ads (and limit tracking) on your mobile device, there’s no going back. Apart from improving your privacy, you’ll find that web pages load faster, you use less data and also see a modest improvement in battery life.
