There seems to be a new trend going around on the greedier of websites out there to block Firefox users based on the fact that many of them could be running AdBlock and cutting down the revenue stream of said websites’ masters. Ignoring the rather obvious matter that someone using AdBlock would not, were they forced or unable to use it, click said ads, it seems more of a ploy to grab clicks through deceit or, quite possibly, prevent users of decent browsers see how crappy some people have coded their websites - so as to work only in IE, preferably with the most arcane of browser extensions available.

Well, if you think enough is enough, here’s a couple of quick tips on how to go around some of these blocks while still maintaining an ad-free browsing experience¹.

Number One is the User-Agent Switcher Firefox extension. Seeing as how many of the websites that try to detect if you are running Firefox or not are generally only taking a peek at the User-Agent that your browser sends across, this is the easiest way to circumvent the check. So you can keep using AdBlock afterwards and let the webmaster think you were just another MSIE user.

Number Two and a personal favourite involves using a modified hosts file to block ads even before they reach your system². A rather popular file for this purpose can be found here. You may need, from time to time, to re-download this for updates or simply enter things manually. The format should be quite obvious:

127.0.0.1 ad.doubleclick.net

will make your computer think that the address for ad.doubleclick.net is 127.0.0.1 - but that is, in fact, your own computer’s address, and so everything that tries to open a connection to doubleclick will in fact go locally. Certainly, this will still show to webmasters that you are using Firefox, if that’s the case, but it serves more as a way to make people aware that ads can be blocked in other ways and irregardless of the browser of choice. So banning Firefox is a ridiculous idea and one that, in the end, will succeed in only pissing off users rather than getting clicks. Just take a look at this entry on Babblative to see what I mean.

P.S. For those that are wondering, I probably won’t be able to resist coming back to the matter of ad blocking and the impact I think it has on webmasters.

1. Note that I am not going to engage in any kind of debate on whether blocking ads does, really, impact negatively those websites that depend on them [↩]
2. As far as I can tell, AdBlock will simply save you from seeing the ads [↩]