Does Vpn Block Ads | 5 Best VPNs with Adblock

5 Best VPNs with Adblock (Does VPN Really Block Ads?)

A VPN is a great way to protect your privacy and keep confidential details hidden. It’s a popular option for preventing ISPs and governments from monitoring you. Will it, however, shield you from advertisers as well? Is it true that a VPN blocks ads?

A simple VPN service simply establishes a secure encrypted tunnel between your computer and the VPN server. Your visitors will then be guided to the destination website. This means that the VPN server establishes a link on your behalf, and the website is unaware of your identity. If you use a VPN, however, your identity is only partially hidden.

A standalone VPN is not an ad blocker and does not have adequate protection against online advertisements.

Advertisers have devised a variety of methods to classify you other than your IP address. They employ a variety of techniques that a simple VPN cannot counteract, so let’s look at how marketers monitor you in the first place.

How do ads follow you online?

You’ve already noticed that as soon as you search for something online, advertisements follow you around everywhere you go. Companies that collect data on you use advanced methods to classify you and sell your information to advertisers. And it’s all happening right now. There are new ways to identify internet users online, but these three are by far the most common among advertisers:

• Cookies that monitor your activities
• Pixel tracking
• Fingerprinting of browsers and devices
• Cookies that monitor your activities

A cookie is a small text file that is stored on your computer’s hard drive and contains a user ID, session ID, and other information. It aids the proper operation of websites. It helps a user to remain signed in or retain their shopping cart information after returning to the website, for example. Cookies have a one-of-a-kind property: they are domain-specific. This means that only the website to which they belong will read them.

Once the cookie policy is accepted multiple cookies are downloaded to your browser. BUT, some websites do not tell (or try to hide) that cookies from advertising networks sometimes are downloaded as well. These cookies can be read by any website that contains the advertising network’s ads all over the internet.

It works like this: first, an ad network’s cookie is stored on your browser. Then, when another website with the same advertiser networks’ ads is visited, it sends a query to a tracking server where the cookie is read. Reading cookies from different websites the advertiser can easily tell where you have previously been and what you searched for across the internet.

Tracking pixels

Another common technology for monitoring users online is the tracking pixel. It’s a one-pixel dot that can be inserted into the HTML code of a website or an email. This undetectable monitoring pixel contains a code that can be activated if someone visits and performs a specific action.

The behaviors have been taken on the website to evaluate user behavior and aid in conversion tracking. By reading a cookie on your computer and transmitting information about you to a server, the tracking pixel provides a user with a unique identifier that can be used to monitor them. This pixel will collect information about your location, operating system, browser, and website activities.

When it comes to browsers, there’s a technique called browser fingerprinting that can be used to detect advertising.

Browser fingerprinting

This technique is used to identify or partially identify the internet user’s device and browser. When you visit a website the browser sends a lot of information about itself:

• • Type of web browser – whether it is Safari, Chrome, or Firefox
  • Screen resolution
  • Plugins installed
  • Preferred Language
  • OS (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, Linux)
  • and more

It looks that this information is very generic and any browser or device can have it. But the key is that the combination of these parameters allows identifying you. Well, at least partially. This allows ads to follow users online.

Information from ipleak.net contains various parameters of the browser fingerprinting

Does VPN block ads

VPN technology establishes a stable link to the website through its server. It protects you from strangers snooping on your personal information in this way. The browser, on the other hand, continues to save cookies from websites and sends generic information about itself.

With this in mind, we may conclude that VPN technology is not an ad blocker on its own.

It offers only rudimentary security against ad monitoring and malware. What about a VPN service that claims to shield you from online tracking?

To block ads, a VPN service must have additional features and technologies. On the app or server level, VPN providers establish adblocking and tracking security. Only a few providers have the ability to block obnoxious advertisements, monitoring, and malicious websites.

How do VPNs block ads?

Ads are handled by VPN providers by blocking or redirecting DNS requests to advertisers’ servers. They normally use their own DNS servers, which makes controlling internet traffic pretty simple for them. Once these requests have been blocked, the browser does not display advertisements.

Third-party lists are used by VPN providers to block malicious adware and tracking cookies. There are third-party sites that have massive databases of malicious domains and IP addresses. These lists are updated regularly, and VPNs pay a fee to access them.

Ads may be disabled by rerouting advertiser networks’ IP addresses, making it impossible to overcome them. Redirecting to “localhost” or “0.0.0.0” advertisements, for example, displays the message “the website is not reachable.” These types of redirects may occur at the server, app, or browser extension level.

Adblocking on the app ensures that these requests are handled on your computer, rather than by VPN providers, which use a server-level solution. The fact that such a function is available across the entire infrastructure means that it will operate on any server, system, or platform.

5 Best VPNs with Adblock

While it is relatively easy to block annoying ads, but not that many VPN providers offer this feature.

Here are few VPN providers with ad blocks:

NordVPN

Surfshark

CyberGhost

Conclusion

Advertisers watch you online using cookies, pixels, and browser fingerprinting techniques. However, VPN technology alone would not be able to block advertisements or keep advertisers at bay. A VPN service must have additional features to block ads. The CyberSec functionality of NordVPN is an excellent ad-blocker. It prevents you from being monitored and works on any system or platform.