Blocking Out Advertising

Let us block out advertising. And scam attempts at the same time.

Let us no longer allow advertising to forcibly invade our private lives without our having given permission.

This flood of intrusive advertising pushes us to buy ever more cars, junk food, appliances, furniture, clothes, cosmetics, smartphones, televisions, computers, games — a thousand things we do not really need.

Let us learn to erect barriers to protect our private lives. Our time is precious; let us not waste it reading, listening to, or watching advertisements. We have far more important things to do — if only to enjoy a moment of calm in this world that has become so noisy and so pressing, endlessly seeking to grab our attention.

"We all pay for this new madness of mankind, advertising, with its hateful noises, its shameless lights, its insolent proportions, its cynical injunctions, its intrusions and its obsessions..." Georges Duhamel

The more we let advertising into our private lives, the more tempted we are to buy things we do not really need. Besides being very bad for our wallets, every purchase contributes to the extraction of ores, to the pollution of the air we breathe and the groundwater we drink, to the emission of greenhouse gases that generate storms, floods, droughts and fires.

Stop.

Life is too short to let advertising invade us to this extent.

Getting rid of the television

It is high time we stopped letting the programme of what we watch be imposed on us. The era of television is over. It belongs to another age.

Television constantly broadcasts unwanted advertising, interrupting programmes or even displaying it during them. Let us banish this object from our homes.

Let us be responsible, and choose for ourselves on the web what we wish to watch and at the time that suits us. We are adult enough to decide for ourselves what interests us and when we are available for it.

Adding an ad blocker to web browsers

Whatever website we visit, it is generally invaded by advertisements of every kind trying to grab our attention. It is a true invasion.

Whatever web browser we use (Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari...), let us add an ad blocker.

A selection of free and paid ad blockers

Let us also develop the reflex of ticking "continue without accepting", or "refuse all non-essential cookies", on the popup that now systematically appears on every website we visit, asking permission to track our every move via cookies in order to better target the type of advertising it displays or sends us afterwards. It has sometimes become a very difficult exercise to find this link, often written in tiny print, unlike the enormous, highly visible coloured "Accept" button — but it is only a matter of practice: after a while, it becomes a reflex for the eye to avoid looking at the big flashy buttons and to quickly spot the small link to click to refuse to be tracked.

It is a bit like the reflex we can develop to avoid the omnipresent advertising in public spaces: with a little practice, it becomes a reflex not to look at — let alone read — what is displayed on anything that looks like a billboard, especially if it is lit up and flashy, especially if it plays videos.

Let us also develop the reflex of not creating an account and not logging in on sites like YouTube or their equivalents. We can perfectly well watch videos without creating an account, without logging in — and thus without Google being able to link our personal details to what we watch.

In the same way, let us refuse to create an account and log in on our web browsers. We can perfectly well browse on Firefox, for example, without being logged in, without creating an account.

Finally, let us add a plugin to our browsers that removes all the video suggestions YouTube floods us with as soon as we watch a first video that actually did interest us:

UNHOOK - Block YouTube suggestions and comments

Fleeing social networks

As explained in a previous chapter, the danger of social networks is that they show us only articles and messages matching our interests, in order to create an addiction so that we stay on the site as long as possible. Indeed, the algorithms of social networks are designed to track every message or article we read, those to which we add positive emoticons, those we reply to... in order to show us only messages and articles on similar themes. It is a way of making the user addicted, like a junkie who can no longer stop scrolling. With, of course, heaps of advertising related to the interests spotted by the algorithms.

We then get the impression that the whole world thinks like us. That we are therefore "right". If the majority thinks like us, it means we were not mistaken; we made the right choices, took the right decisions. What a delusion. And what a risk. Only reading articles and messages on varied themes, with varied ideas and opinions, is a source of reflection, of questioning, of possible reconsideration, of deeper research, of exchanges and inquiries with interlocutors from diverse horizons. It is the only way to evolve and move forward. It is above all the way that offers the best chances of avoiding being wrong. To err is human. What is serious is remaining stuck there.

Let us stay open, attentive, on the lookout, constantly keeping watch in all directions. Let us communicate, exchange, question people from worlds different from our own. The key to a better path, a better way, lies there.

Let us flee social networks. Let us delete our accounts and never go back. Not to mention that we have better things to do than waste so much time reading what is often mere nonsense — messages too short to be understood correctly and without sufficient argumentation to be convincing. And above all, the worst: the flood of comments that follow, which make one's eyes water, so hateful and aggressive is the tone.

To keep an eye on the articles and posts of specific, chosen, targeted users on social networks, there is no need to create an account or be logged in: many users have chosen to make their articles and posts public; one need only bookmark the public URLs of their profiles and consult them regularly. Unfortunately, some social networks like LinkedIn try to force account creation after a certain number of "logged-out" views of a profile from the same browser: when we try to access the profile directly, LinkedIn automatically redirects to the login form (even in a private window).

To keep consulting public profiles without any time limit, there is the solution below:

When LinkedIn redirects to the login page, click on the plugin; two choices are then available:

Unfortunately, for certain profiles that LinkedIn barricades particularly heavily, such as Arthur Mensch's, it is necessary to change browsers regularly (Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Safari...): our "quota" for each browser resets after a certain time.

In the settings of Firefox Developer Edition:

Setting up one's phone in "whitelist" mode

The number of calls and text messages for advertising and scam attempts keeps growing and is becoming insane. We may well "block" each number after an unwanted call, but new ones keep coming — it is absolutely endless. Especially the numbers of scammers and fraudsters: they buy entire ranges of numbers, and then set algorithms to bombard us relentlessly.

It is absurd. Because of the telephone, would we no longer be entitled to a private life, without being constantly interrupted in our activities by calls and messages that do not interest us at all? Today we receive more unwanted calls and messages than ones from people who matter to us.

Let us refuse this dictatorship. It is only a matter of time before the telephone is abandoned for this very reason. In the meantime, let us set our phones to "whitelist" mode so as to receive only calls from people we have previously added to our contacts.

This feature is already present on iPhones.

For Android, we can install the CallFilter app, which does not collect our personal data and displays no advertising.

Once installed: CallFilter => Settings => click on "Advanced settings" => Enable "Block everything except contacts"

NB: This means our phone rings only for people we have previously added to our contacts. Unfortunately, the other calls that were blocked remain visible in the call log, and trigger a missed-call notification. => In order not to be disturbed by these missed-call notifications, which do not interest us in the slightest, let us disable notifications and badges on the "Phone" app icons for missed calls. If one of our contacts could not reach us, they can always leave a message, and we will receive the notification of a voicemail message waiting to be heard.

An example of what this can look like on an Android phone: Settings => Notifications => Advanced settings => Show system apps => Phone

That is not all, because the phone operator sets by default the sending of a text message for every missed call... As if missed-call notifications were not enough. Let us pollute people's private lives thoroughly to the very end; let us flood them with noisy notifications that break their concentration in all their activities and properly increase their stress.

To stop receiving a text for every missed call, we must call our voicemail number and follow the instructions... For example, it can look like this: press key 3 to "customise your voicemail" => then press key 4 "Your missed-call SMS notification service" => then press key 1 "To deactivate this service."

Really, as if we had nothing better to do than spend so much time deactivating this flood-of-notifications system set up by default absolutely everywhere.

But even that is still not enough. Oh no, not yet. The problem, indeed, is that people who are not in our contacts, and whose calls have been blocked, can also leave us a message on our voicemail. Yes, really. Everything in this world is designed so that we receive advertising (and fraud attempts). As a result, we keep receiving these heaps of advertising and these scam attempts on our voicemail.

Indeed, a blocked call triggers "busy" mode, meaning that the caller hears the "fast" tone indicating that the person they are trying to reach is on the line (when this is not at all the case). Unfortunately, most phones are set up so that when the "busy" signal is triggered, the person trying to reach us is redirected to our voicemail to leave us a message. In the same way, when our phone is switched off or in "airplane" mode — that is, when we are unreachable — the person trying to reach us is also by default redirected to our voicemail to leave a message, whether that person is in our contacts or not.

To prevent this, we can configure our phone's call handling differently, as explained in the following paragraph.

An example of what this can look like on an Android phone: Phone => Settings => More settings => Call Forwarding => Voice Call

This means that when our phone is on and has network signal, only people in our contacts can leave us a voicemail message if we do not pick up. On the other hand, if our phone is off, or in "airplane" mode, no one can leave us a message: the person trying to reach us is automatically informed that we are "unreachable". If it is really important, that person will try to call back later when our phone is on — that is, when we are available.

Just because we own a mobile phone does not entitle the whole world to disturb us at any moment, at any hour. We have the right to a private life. We have the right to periods of rest, especially at night. We have the right to stay focused on our activities.

If we have a mobile phone, let us unplug the landline so as to no longer receive the carpet-sellers' advertising and the scam attempts of dishonest people.

On the other hand, unfortunately, mobile phones are designed in such a way that we are obliged to receive text messages. Admittedly, we can blacklist numbers one by one. But as explained above, it is endless, hopeless. So, failing an escape from this SMS dictatorship, let us disable notifications, visual and audible, so as to no longer be alerted when a text arrives. If we know we are due to receive a confirmation code, we will go and check our texts to read it. But at least we will no longer be disturbed by this intrusive advertising and these thousands of scam attempts.

An example of what this can look like on an Android phone: Settings => Notifications => Messages: Disabled Settings => Notifications => Advanced settings => Show system apps => Phone => SMS: No sound or visual interruption (Low)

Completely disabling visual and audible notifications for missed calls and texts means informing our loved ones that, to be certain of reaching us, it is better to use apps like Signal, for example. Signal respects the private character of our messages, and can be configured free of charge so that no one can contact us from our phone number: if we want to communicate with a new person, we must first give them our username.

Signal => Settings => Privacy: Click on "Phone number" (Choose who can see your phone number and who can use it to find you on Signal)

NB: Another advantage of Signal, unlike other apps of the same kind, is that when we want to send a new message to a new person not yet in our contacts, if we randomly type the first letters of a possible username, the search feature displays no suggestions of existing usernames that are not already in our contacts. => Which means a fraudster cannot contact us unless they know our exact username.

NB: Yet another advantage of Signal is the ability to configure the automatic deletion of messages older than a defined duration (30 days, 6 months, a year...). For now this is only possible on Android, but the feature will soon be developed on iOS and Desktop as well.

For now, the usernames of apps like Signal are not yet "disclosed" and "scattered" into the wild the way all our phone numbers are, to the great delight of fraudsters and scammers who use every stratagem to extort money from us. But one day, these usernames may suffer the same fate...

Today we make another sad observation: the proof that a human being exists is a SIM card or, failing that, a postal address. If we want to prove to the world that we really exist, we must hand over a mobile number... How sad.

Let us refuse to create an account whenever the form requires us to enter a mobile phone number. There are other ways to receive a confirmation code. There are also banks that provide personal devices generating codes linked to our account. Especially since hackers today know how to clone SIM cards: nothing will ever stop them from hacking any identification system.

Unfortunately, the only way to prove the real existence of a particular human being is to know them in person. One day, in a perhaps not-so-distant future, we will be forced to return to small communities of 150 people at most, who will thus be able to know one another.

The "whitelist by default" email service has yet to be invented

Unfortunately, an email service that receives only emails from people we have previously added to our contacts does not exist. Not yet, anyway.

And it is missed. Sorely.

Without even mentioning the flood of advertising emails we receive, the number of email fraud attempts keeps growing, just as by phone and text.

Our inboxes have become veritable dustbins.

Here again, blocking unwanted senders' email addresses one by one is endless. Here again, unsubscribing one by one from all the advertising mailing lists is endless; companies keep adding new ones — new mailing lists, with new sender addresses.

Why should we accept this? Fraud attempts will keep multiplying. And these heaps of advertising will keep pushing us to consume ever more.

Likewise, the feature that automatically deletes all messages and calendar events older than a year or two still does not exist. Even though it would free up so much storage space, instead of polluting the planet a little more by storing gigabytes of chatter and advertising that is no longer relevant.

Here again, while waiting for something better, let us abandon our inboxes as much as possible, reserving them solely for administrative matters, which unfortunately cannot escape them. Let us inform our loved ones that it is better to contact us on apps like Signal if they want to be sure of reaching us. Because in the end, an app like Signal is almost the same thing: we receive and send messages, with attachments, and we can even call. And let us open that dustbin of an inbox only from time to time, to check whether administrative tasks await us.

Displaying a refusal of advertising on one's letterbox

As for our letterbox, let us no longer allow it to be invaded by kilos of paper advertising that goes straight into the bin without even being read, contributing yet again to the waste of the Earth's resources.

Let us stick, prominently, on our letterboxes a sticker indicating that any failure to respect a "No advertising" label is punishable by a €7,500 fine.

These stickers can be ordered online

We can add a note saying we will file a complaint straight away if we receive advertising despite the display of this sticker.

Let us also develop the reflex of configuring our public-service and other accounts to receive only emails and no more paper mail: "paperless" communications. Admittedly, all the servers needed for this dematerialisation, which stay on 24/7, consume electricity and therefore resources. But less than all the resources needed to make all that paper, those printers, those envelopes, and then transport all that mail.

Every time we create an account, let us therefore develop the reflex of immediately looking in that account's settings for the "paperless" box to tick. Whether it is home or car insurance, taxes, banks...

Finally, to avoid the carpet-sellers and others who come knocking at our doors and disturbing our private lives to sell us anything and everything, trying to scam us as much as possible along the way, we can always unplug our doorbells — that will be that much less noise in our lives. Let us not open our door unless we know in advance that we are expecting someone. If we are due to receive a parcel, let us have it delivered to a pick-up point. It is sad to have come to this; unfortunately we receive more bad visits today than pleasant ones.