After last week’s post about a big reason WHY you should use an ad blocker when you visit websites, I got several inquiries asking, “What ad blocker should I use? Where do I find it? How do I get it on my computer?”. So this week we’ll talk about a couple of the popular ones, including the one I use on my own primary computer.

 
For either of these ad blockers, you’ll need to install them as an extension to your web browser(s). That just means it will run as sort of an “add-on” feature of Chrome or Firefox. So you can either get the ad blocker from within Chrome or Firefox, using this basic procedure:
In Firefox:

Click the icon in the top right that looks like 3 horizontal lines and choose “Add-ons”
Type the name of the ad blocker in the search bar in the top right area
When it comes up in the search results, click the “Install” button and follow the prompts

 
In Chrome:

Click the icon in the top right that looks like 3 horizontal lines and choose “Settings”
On the left side, click “Extensions”
At the bottom of the list of current extension, click on the link that says “Get more extension”
Type the name of the ad blocker in the search bar in the top left
When you see it in the search results, click on “Add to Chrome” and follow the prompts

 
(If you use Internet Explorer, the first step is to quit using Internet Explorer. But if you do want to keep using it as your web browser, you can go straight to the AdBlock Plus website and click on the green button that says “Install for Internet Explorer”. I don’t think uBlock Origin is compatible with Internet Explorer.)
 
uBlock Origin
Website: https://www.ublock.org/
uBlock Origin is the one I have been using for quite some time. It does a great job keeping the ads from popping up on the various websites I visit.
It also knows to alert me when I click on something in Google search results that is actually an ad. Like if I search for “Altra Instinct 2.0” (the running shoe that I use), Google displays these offers from various vendors because it knows I’m probably shopping for shoes:

 
But when I click on one of them, uBlock alerts me that I just clicked on an advertisement and shows the following options. I usually just click on “Temporarily” so I can go through and see the website. But if I wanted to just always allow ads from Google searches such as this, I could click on “Permanently” and the ads would take me straight to the website. Or I can just click “Go back”.

 
AdBlock Plus
Website: https://adblockplus.org/
AdBlock Plus is an ad blocking program that has been around for a long time. In fact, it may have been the first ad blocker available. It also works well. One thing to keep in mind with this one though – you might notice that the tag line does not say “surf the web without ads”. No, instead it says “Surf the web without annoying ads”. This might seem like an insignificant distinction, but it does have meaning. AdBlock Plus, by default, lets SOME ads be displayed – the “nice” ones. If an ad has obnoxious blinking text or it’s jumping around on the page or it’s otherwise too distracting, it will be blocked. So you will see a few ads still, unless you go into the configuration and tell it, “No, I don’t want to see ANY ads”. At least they do give you that option.
The one  you end up using would just be a personal preference. You might want to try one of them for a week, then remove it and put the other one on for a week. No matter which one you use, your web experience will be much more enjoyable (and safe) with most or all of the ads not displaying.
Here’s a video talking about these two ad blocking extensions:

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