AdNauseam is a

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

web

browser extension A browser extension is a software module for customizing a web browser. Browsers typically allow users to install a variety of extensions, including user interface modifications, cookie management, ad blocking, and the custom scripting and st ...

that blocks Internet ads while automatically simulating clicks on them. Created in 2014 by Daniel Howe,

Helen Nissenbaum Helen Nissenbaum is professor of information science at Cornell Tech. She is best known for the concept of "contextual integrity" and her work on privacy, privacy law, trust, and security in the online world. Specifically, contextual integrity h ...

, and Mushon Zer-Aviv, the software is a

digital rights Digital rights are those human rights and Natural and legal rights, legal rights that allow individuals to access, use, create, and publish digital media or to access and use computers, other Consumer electronics, electronic devices, and teleco ...

advocacy project that counters surveillance and

data profiling Data profiling is the process of examining the data available from an existing information source (e.g. a database or a file) and collecting statistics or informative summaries about that data. The purpose of these statistics may be to: # Find ou ...

employed by online

advertising network An online advertising network or ad network is a company that connects advertisers to websites that want to host advertisements. The key function of an ad network is an aggregation of ad supply from publishers and matching it with the advertiser' ...

s. The extension functions on

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curren ...

and

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, an ...

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

banned AdNauseam from the

Chrome Web Store Web Store is Google's online store for its Chrome web browser. As of 2024, Chrome Web Store hosts about 138,000 extensions and 33,000 themes. History Chrome Web Store was publicly unveiled in December 2010, and was opened on February 11, 20 ...

in 2017. ''

MIT Technology Review ''MIT Technology Review'' is a bimonthly magazine wholly owned by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was founded in 1899 as ''The Technology Review'', and was re-launched without "''The''" in its name on April 23, 1998, under then pu ...

'' tested AdNauseam's effectiveness with Nissenbaum in a 2021 experiment, during which Google recognized most of AdNauseam's automated ad clicks as legitimate and billed a

Google Ads Google Ads, formerly known as Google Adwords, is an online advertising platform developed by Google, where advertisers bid to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, and videos to web users. It can place ads in the res ...

test account accordingly.

History

Prior to AdNauseam, co-creators Daniel Howe and

released another extension, TrackMeNot, that masked the user's web queries by sending unrelated queries to search engines. Nissenbaum, a professor at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

, published her book ''Obfuscation'' to explain how irrelevant data can be used to preserve user privacy. In 2015, according to ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', AdNauseam designer Mushon Zer-Aviv referred to the extension as "more art project than mass-rollout tech". Howe released version 2.0 of the extension in July 2016 at the

Hackers on Planet Earth The Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) Computer security conference, conference series is a hacker convention sponsored by the security hacker magazine ''2600: The Hacker Quarterly'' that until 2020 was typically held at Hotel Pennsylvania, in Ma ...

conference. Version 3.0 became available in November 2016.

Ban from Chrome Web Store

banned AdNauseam from the

in January 2017, citing the platform's developer agreement, which granted the company "the right to suspend or bar any Product from the Web Store at its sole discretion". When questioned by ''

Fast Company ''Fast Company'' is an American business magazine published monthly in print and online, focusing on technology, business, and design. It releases six print issues annually. History ''Fast Company'' was founded in November 1995 by Alan Webb ...

'', Google denied that AdNauseam's ad-clicking functionality triggered the ban, instead claiming that AdNauseam was removed for simultaneously blocking and concealing ads—a behavior exhibited by other extensions that Google continued to allow on the platform. AdNauseam had 60,000 users at the time of the ban, and was the first ad blocking extension designed for

desktop computers A desktop computer, often abbreviated as desktop, is a personal computer designed for regular use at a stationary location on or near a desk (as opposed to a portable computer) due to its size and power requirements. The most common configurati ...

that was banned from the Chrome Web Store. Users were initially able to bypass the ban by installing the extension in

's developer mode, but Google subsequently marked AdNauseam as

malware Malware (a portmanteau of ''malicious software'')Tahir, R. (2018)A study on malware and malware detection techniques . ''International Journal of Education and Management Engineering'', ''8''(2), 20. is any software intentionally designed to caus ...

to prevent this workaround. Zer-Aviv had previously anticipated the possibility of Google removing the extension and believed that the company did so to safeguard its use of advertising as an income source. ''Fast Company'' expected a competing ad blocker to be built into Chrome that would adhere to criteria published in March 2017 by the Coalition For Better Ads – an industry group that Google co-founded – that evaluated visual appeal instead of privacy considerations.

Functionality

AdNauseam blocks and repeatedly sends click

events Event may refer to: Gatherings of people * Ceremony, an event of ritual significance, performed on a special occasion * Convention (meeting), a gathering of individuals engaged in some common interest * Event management, the organization of eve ...

to all ads served by

web domain Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by D ...

s that ignore the user's

Do Not Track Do Not Track (DNT) is a deprecated non-standard HTTP header field designed to allow internet users to opt out of tracking by websites—which includes the collection of data regarding a user's activity across multiple distinct contexts, and the ...

preference. When it sends click events, AdNauseam introduces incorrect information about the user's preferences into

web tracking Web tracking is the practice by which operators of websites and third parties collect, store and share information about visitors' activities on the World Wide Web. Analysis of a user's behaviour may be used to provide content that enables the op ...

systems used for

targeted advertising Targeted advertising or data-driven marketing is a form of advertising, including online advertising, that is directed towards an audience with certain traits, based on the product or person the advertiser is promoting. These traits can either ...

, thereby impeding ad companies from profiling the user. The auto-clicking behavior additionally forces advertisers who

pay per click Pay-per-click (PPC) is an internet advertising model used to drive traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher (typically a search engine, website owner, or a network of websites) when the ad is clicked. This differs from more t ...

to incur financial costs. The extension is initially configured to click on all eligible ads, and the user can change the proportion of ads it clicks on. AdNauseam's ad blocking feature is derived from the uBlock extension. In a January 2021 experiment conducted in collaboration with Nissenbaum using test accounts on the

and

Google AdSense Google AdSense is a program run by Google through which website publishers in the Google Display Network, Google Network of content sites serve text, images, video, or interactive media advertisements that are targeted advertising, targeted t ...

platforms, ''

'' confirmed that AdNauseam's automatic clicks of Google's ads on a test website accumulated expenses for a Google Ads advertiser account and revenue for an AdSense publisher account. Google processed transactions for ads clicked by AdNauseam on browsers operated by human users and on three of four browsers automated with the

Selenium Selenium is a chemical element; it has symbol (chemistry), symbol Se and atomic number 34. It has various physical appearances, including a brick-red powder, a vitreous black solid, and a grey metallic-looking form. It seldom occurs in this elem ...

toolkit. The experiment ultimately gained $100 of income for the AdSense account, which ''MIT Technology Review'' interpreted as evidence of AdNauseam's efficacy.

Reception

Electronic Frontier Foundation The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is an American international non-profit digital rights group based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 1990 to promote Internet civil liberties. It provides funds for legal defense in court, ...

representative Alan Toner described AdNauseam as "a piece of

agitprop Agitprop (; from , portmanteau of ''agitatsiya'', "agitation" and ''propaganda'', "propaganda") refers to an intentional, vigorous promulgation of ideas. The term originated in the Soviet Union where it referred to popular media, such as literatu ...

theater" intended to "creatively protest the surveillance mechanism behind advertising". In a ''MediaPost'' opinion piece,

Fox Networks Group Fox Networks Group (FNG), formerly known as Fox International Channels (FIC), was the television broadcaster, television networks division of News Corporation and later 21st Century Fox that operated from 1993 to 2021. It oversaw the production, ...

advertising executive Joe Marchese remarked that "AdNauseam aims to screw with the ad industry in ways that just using an ad blocker doesn't", and opined that the extension, "while obviously hostile to our industry, is extremely smart". Marchese believed that the advertising industry could use AdNauseam to raise awareness of

ad fraud Ad fraud (also referred to as click fraud or PPC fraud) is concerned with the practice of fraudulently representing online advertisement impressions, clicks, conversion or data events in order to generate revenue. Ad-frauds are particularly popul ...

conducted by "layers of middlemen and shady ad networks". Sean Blanchfield, CEO of anti-adblock consulting firm PageFair, expressed concern that when AdNauseam is used, "advertisers will not be able to distinguish it from deliberate

click fraud Click fraud is a type of ad fraud that occurs on the Internet in pay per click (PPC) online advertising. In this type of advertising, the owners of websites that post the ads are paid based on how many site visitors click on the ads. Fraud occurs ...

" and that "if it gains popularity with technical users, its only achievement will be to destroy the businesses that run its users' favorite websites". Anti-bot technology vendor Solve Media's CEO, Ari Jacoby, accused AdNauseam of being "designed to defraud for sport" and "a sick display of the blatant disregard that some have for the symbiotic relationship between advertising and editorial that supports a free Internet"; ''

InformationWeek ''InformationWeek'' is a digital magazine which conducts corresponding face-to-face events, virtual events, and research. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United State ...

'' rebutted that such a relationship had already been challenged by the growth of ad blocker usage.

References

External links