Security & Privacy

Surfing the web, you may be astounded by the proliferation of ads as content providers try and figure out how to make money. We’ve been reading recently about the potential demise of newspapers, because so many people read them on the web rather than buying them. However, the only solution these sites have found to make money is to increase the number of ads they show you. And not just static ads, but moving, jiggling ads, that prevent you from reading the text they’re “selling” you. Or annoying Flash ads that run over and over, with moving images and music. It’s gotten so you can’t read much on major web sites.

Now we understand that content providers need to earn money to pay for their content, but sometimes enough is enough. NetBarrier contains a useful feature that can make your surfing much more enjoyable. Its ad banner filter lets you get rid of ads on websites. It’s easy to use, and comes with a set of filters built in.

In addition to the built-in filters, you can add your own filter strings to get rid of ads that NetBarrier doesn’t remove out of the box. Since there are so many possible URLs for ads, we’ve only included those that are commonly used. The best way to add new ones is to hover your cursor over an image and look, in your browser’s status bar, at its URL. Often, these addresses will contain strings like /ad/, /ads/, or /banners/. Just add strings like this to the ad banner filter to make them go away.

When you want to see ads – or when you’ve filtered parts of a web site that you want to view – just go to the Intego menu in your menubar (if it’s not visible, you can turn it on in NetUpdate’s preferences), choose NetBarrier X5 > Banner Filter. This toggles the filter on or off.