5 ad-blocking tools every Windows user needs

• Privacy Badger
• Adblock Plus
• uBlock Origin
• AdGuard
• Ghostery

I’ll be upfront here — sites like Pocket-lint depend on ad revenue, so if you want technology news to continue, it’s important that you allow ads on the sites that you enjoy. But I also acknowledge that web ads can get out of control, bombarding you when you’re just trying to catch up on events or solve a problem. In the worst scenarios, ads can be scams or vectors for malware.

There are a variety of ad-blocking tools for Windows out there, some of which are general-purpose, while others are narrowly targeted. The ones to use will depend on your situation — just remember that you can often use blacklisting and whitelisting options to include or exclude sites from their effects.

Privacy Badger

No muss, no fuss

Strictly speaking, Privacy Badger is a browser extension (created by the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation) for blocking trackers. But as the EFF explains it, it’s built to block any third-party trackers that continue monitoring you despite Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control requests, and most of those happen to be ads. If your primary concern is privacy and security, rather than distractions, Privacy Badger could be a good choice. It’s completely free, and there are versions for Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera.

If your primary concern is privacy and security, rather than distractions, Privacy Badger could be a good choice.

Whenever you’re on a webpage, you can use the extension to view the tracking at work and adjust what’s allowed. Setting a tracker’s slider to red blocks ads and cookies. Yellow blocks cookies alone, while green allows everything.

Note that if your main concern is ads, you may still need a separate blocker. Indeed, while Privacy Badger used to block a lot of YouTube ads, most will get through now, since there aren’t third-party trackers involved.

Adblock Plus

The mainstream blocker

Adblock Plus is popular, but also bound to be the most controversial tool on this list. There are a couple of reasons for this, chief among them being participation in the Acceptable Ads initiative. This is intended to provide the financial support to websites I talked about in the intro by still allowing unobtrusive ads to get through. You have to disable a default setting to block all ads, which will rub some people the wrong way, given that there are more aggressive alternatives out there.

You may be better off spending on YouTube Premium or Premium Lite if you’re going to go the subscription route.

Also, while the base version of Adblock is free, you have to pay for a Premium subscription to interrupt things like floating videos, cookie consent pop-ups, and newsletter promos. This is $5 per month or $50 per year, and goes to support the development team — but that may be a tough ask if you’re already paying for cloud storage and multiple streaming services. I know I’m willing to put up with ads to avoid paying another monthly bill.

Extensions exist for Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Edge, and even Yandex. Note that if your main concern is blocking YouTube ads, this tool and the others below on the list seem to work — but remember that your favorite YouTubers depend on ads too. You may be better off spending on YouTube Premium or Premium Lite if you’re going to go the subscription route.

uBlock Origin

Free and simple, but with a catch

uBlock Origin used to be my weapon of choice, mainly because I appreciate its simplicity. If you want to block or unblock content on a particular page, all you have to do is open the extension and click a giant power button. It’s also fully free, open-source, and available for Chrome, Edge, Opera, and Firefox. Power users will like its customization options. For many of you, I suspect, uBlock will easily be preferable to Adblock.

​​​​​​​If you want to block or unblock content on a particular page, all you have to do is open the extension and click a giant power button.

What’s the catch, then? Why did I jump ship? A shift in Chrome support. At a certain point, Google added something called Manifest V3 to the Chrome extension platform. This was meant to improve security and performance, but altered the webRequest API, which uBlock normally relies on. Developers are supposed to use the declarativeNetRequest API instead, but this limits what uBlock can do.

If you do have Chrome, you can still use uBlock Origin Lite, which accommodates Manifest V3. This software is still labeled “experimental,” however, which isn’t exactly confidence-inspiring. The mainstream user might as well stick with Privacy Badger or Adblock.

AdGuard

Bringing more apps into the mix

There are AdGuard browser extensions for Chrome, Edge, Opera, Firefox, and Yandex, but there’s nothing in particular to recommend those over the other options on this list. Instead the main attraction here is a standalone app, which can not only block ads and trackers on the web, but ads within any app. You’ll also find parental controls, custom filtering rules for advanced users, and defenses against phishing and other malicious content.

The main attraction here is a standalone app, which can not only block ads and trackers on the web, but ads within any Windows app.

This wide net is possible because of a combination of DNS, HTTPS, and other forms of filtering. If you like, the software can even block Windows diagnostic data from being sent to Microsoft, which will of course be attractive for privacy hounds.

The only serious downside I can discern is that after its trial period, the standalone app requires paying for a license. If you despise ads, though, that may be a small tradeoff, particularly since AdGuard’s technology may actually speed up some software. It’s just overkill if you’re only concerned with killing pop-ups and oversized banners.

Ghostery

A blocker with unique perks

I’d be remiss if I left Ghostery out. It’s completely free — supported only by donors — but what really sets it apart are a few unique features. For one thing, it’s the only blocker I’ve seen (emphasis on the personal) that explicitly carries an extension for Brave, not just the usual cohort of Chrome, Edge, Opera, and Firefox. That’s somewhat redundant given Brave’s own ad-blocking tools, but Ghostery does offer quick access to ad, tracker, and consent request settings, and provides unusually detailed info about the trackers it’s halting.

Ghostery provides unusually detailed info about the trackers it’s halting, including stats about sources.

If you’re really concerned with that info, in fact, Ghostery maintains a service called WhoTracks.Me, which can provide stats about the sources of tracking that you won’t easily find elsewhere. There’s also a private web search extension, which not only blocks ads and trackers, but displays the trackers associated with search results before you click on them. That could be worth it to people who want to reward sites that minimize intrusion — though with an ad blocker active, you may not notice any difference.

It’s really tough to find any criticisms to level here. If I’m going to name anything, it’s only that uBlock Origin will be preferable for people wanting maximum customization. Even that may be moot for people who use Chrome and don’t want to deal with uBlock’s limitations in that arena.