The Hole Truth
Charly's Column – Pi-hole
A strange rule seems to dictate that the most useless products and services have the most annoying online advertising. Columnist Charly blocks the garish advertising for all computers on his network centrally with the Pi-hole tool, which is not only for Raspberry Pi devices.
There are two irreconcilable camps in the discussion on the use of banners and skyscrapers on websites: One is populated by people who get annoyed by garish, flashing, fidgety advertising formats that remind them of neon signs from the 50s. An increasing number of these users simply reject advertising on the web as garbage. The opposing camp is occupied by website owners – amateur bloggers, to name just one example – for whom advertising is the only way to recoup their costs for servers and other things.
People who place ads on their websites usually source them from one of several large commercial networks and simply create placeholders on the sites, which are then later replaced with the ads. Most people do not know exactly what advertising their site is showing at any given time.
The ad networks, in turn, allow the ad creators a great amount of freedom. It is no longer only images that are used here, but also JavaScript and the like. Criminals exploit this to display manipulated advertisements that scan the visitor's browser for vulnerabilities and – if they find any – install malicious software or animate the user to download applications of dubious repute. It can thus happen that visiting a highly reputable website actually infects your own PC with malware.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
TUXEDO has unveiled a new InfinityBook Pro with an AMD Ryzen AI 300
This new notebook offers serious power that is ready for your business, development, or entertainment needs.
-
Is This the Year of Linux?
Another major organization has decided to kick Windows and Office to the curb, in favor of Linux.
-
Linux Mint 20 Reaches EOL
With Linux Mint 20 at its end of life, the time has arrived to upgrade to Linux Mint 22.
-
TuxCare Announces Support for AlmaLinux 9.2
Thanks to TuxCare, AlmaLinux 9.2 (and soon version 9.6) now enjoys years of ongoing patching and compliance.
-
Go-Based Botnet Attacking IoT Devices
Using an SSH credential brute-force attack, the Go-based PumaBot is exploiting IoT devices everywhere.
-
Plasma 6.5 Promises Better Memory Optimization
With the stable Plasma 6.4 on the horizon, KDE has a few new tricks up its sleeve for Plasma 6.5.
-
KaOS 2025.05 Officially Qt5 Free
If you're a fan of independent Linux distributions, the team behind KaOS is proud to announce the latest iteration that includes kernel 6.14 and KDE's Plasma 6.3.5.
-
Linux Kernel 6.15 Now Available
The latest Linux kernel is now available with several new features/improvements and the usual bug fixes.
-
Microsoft Makes Surprising WSL Announcement
In a move that might surprise some users, Microsoft has made Windows Subsystem for Linux open source.
-
Red Hat Releases RHEL 10 Early
Red Hat quietly rolled out the official release of RHEL 10.0 a bit early.