How To: Customize Adblock Plus for Chrome
This guest article was written by Tom, one of the editors of chrome-plugins.org, the website featuring reviews of the best extensions, themes and apps for Google Chrome. Read more
With almost 130 million downloads, by far the most popular addon for Firefox is Adblock Plus which reliably blocks all forms of advertisements from the internet to make browsing less distracting, faster and safer. A few months ago, Adblock Plus was ported to the Google Chrome browser as well and in no time the community-driven open-source extension has become the second most popular extension just behind AdBlock by Michael Gundlach. Adblock Plus for Chrome is still in beta as it doesn’t yet offer the same user interface as the very sophisticated Firefox version. But with a few steps you can add the same functionalities to the Chrome version just like on Firefox.
You can download Chrome Adblock Plus from the official website or the Chrome Web Store. Once installed, all banner ads and even video-ads on youtube.com are gone automatically. But Adblock Plus can do much more than that: Depending on the filterlist a user subscribes to, Adblock Plus for Chrome can block any script from loading in the browser. This way, disabling tracking codes or any other unwanted element such as social-bookmarking buttons becomes possible.
Subscribing to an additional filter list with Adblock Plus for Chrome is a bit more complicated than on Firefox. Instead of just clicking on a subscribe-link you manually have to add the URL of the filter list in the options. Which sounds confusing at first is actually not more complicated than simple copy&paste. First, right-click on the ABP logo in your Chrome address field and choose “Options”. There you will se an overview of the filter lists you are subscribed to. Below the list there is a field to add additional subscriptions:
The filter lists determine the elements a website is not permitted to load. They are created and regularly updated by voluntary members of the Adblock Plus community. Most of them are used for blocking ads, others will add more functionalities to Adblock Plus. The most important additions are EasyPrivacy, Antisocial and Malware Domains.
EasyPrivacy: Disable Tracking
Advertising companies such as Google are tracking visitors through Google Analytics or similar tools that are gathering a lot of information about everyone who visits a website using these services. In order to protect your privacy, these tracking codes can easily be disabled with the EasyPrivacy filterlist.
You can subscribe to the EasyList filter list by adding this URL: https://easylist-downloads.adblockplus.org/easyprivacy.txt
Antisocial: Remove Facebook Like-Buttons
Social bookmarking buttons can be found on almost every website these days. But only few people are aware that for example Facebook can save information about any visitor of a website that has the like-button implemented. The most effective way to avoid that is to get rid of the social-buttons altogether with Antisocial for Adblock Plus.
Adding this URL will activate the Antisocial filterlist subscription: https://adversity.googlecode.com/hg/Antisocial.txt
Malware Domains: Safer surfing
All domains known to distribute malware can be blocked with the Malware Domains filterlist to make sure the computer is protected from visiting websites that may execute hazardous scripts.
The Malware Domains filter list can be activated by adding this URL: http://malwaredomains.lanik.us/malwaredomains_full.txt
There is no limit on how many subscriptions a user can activate. However, it is recommended not to subscribe to too many filter lists in order not to impede with the speed of the Chrome browser. But especially if you are regularly surfing on non-English websites, a filter list from the respective locale can improve the blocking effectiveness of Chrome Adblock Plus. An overview of all available filter subscriptions can be found here.