Ad blocking is the practice of preventing web ads from loading in a browser, most often through an extension that filters network requests against blocklists.

What does Ad Blocking mean?

It means stopping advertisements, third-party trackers, and sometimes malicious domains from ever loading, by cancelling matching network requests before the browser fetches them.

How do you use Ad Blocking?

Install an extension like Adblock Plus in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, or Opera, then leave its default filter lists such as EasyList active, or add extras like EasyPrivacy for tracker blocking.

Is Ad Blocking still popular?

Usage rose sharply from mid-2012 onward according to a 2015 PageFair and Adobe report, and Adblock Plus alone holds a 4.4 star rating from over 187,000 Chrome Web Store reviewers.

Ad Blocking

Q: Where did Ad Blocking come from?

The first dedicated ad blocking extension was Adblock 0.1, released by Henrik Aasted Sorensen on December 3, 2002 for the Phoenix browser, which was later renamed Firefox.

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Published August 15, 2026

Ad blocking is the practice of stopping internet advertisements from loading, usually through a browser extension, standalone app, or built-in browser feature1. The first ad blocker was Adblock 0.1, released for the Phoenix browser (later renamed Firefox) by Henrik Aasted Sorensen on December 3, 20022.

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Overview

Ad blocking is the practice of stopping web advertisements from loading in a browser, typically through an extension, a standalone app, or a browser-level setting4. The software works by checking every network request the browser sends against a set of filter list rules and cancelling the ones that match, so the ad, tracker, or malicious domain never reaches the third party at all1.

The two names most people run into are Adblock and Adblock Plus, and despite the shared word they were not built by the same team4. Adblock Plus is made by Eyeo GmbH and ships with widely used filter lists like EasyList and EasyPrivacy, the second of which targets third-party tracking domains and fingerprinting scripts1. The extension is licensed under GPLv3 and is available across Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, Opera, and mobile1. On the Chrome Web Store it holds a 4.4 star rating from more than 187,000 reviewers1.

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Origin & Background

Platform

Phoenix browser (later Firefox)

Creator

Henrik Aasted Sorensen

Date

2002

The first browser extension built specifically to block ads was Adblock 0.1, released by Henrik Aasted Sorensen on December 3, 2002 for the Phoenix browser, which was later renamed Firefox2. Sorensen kept working on it through version 0.3, then handed maintainership to a user called Rue for 0.42.

The original Adblock project effectively stopped receiving updates after Adblock 0.5 shipped on March 29, 20072. By then a separate, much larger project had already picked up the torch on Firefox4.

How It Spread

Adblock Plus arrived in 2006 as a Firefox-only extension built by programmers at Eyeo GmbH, and it quickly became the reference implementation for filter-list based blocking5. Chrome users had to wait until 2009, when independent developer Michael Gundlach shipped a separate extension called Adblock for the Chrome Web Store, inspired by but unrelated to Adblock Plus5.

Gundlach kept a sense of humor about the project. On April 1, 2012 he temporarily rebranded Adblock as Catblock, which replaced blocked ad images with pictures of cats and lolcat-style image macros6. Adoption of ad blocking software grew sharply from mid-2012 onward, according to a 2015 report from analytics firm PageFair and Adobe on the financial cost to publishers3.

As blockers spread, publishers pushed back with anti-adblock scripts that detected the extension and gated content behind an unblock prompt4. Users started threads on the Adblock Plus forums looking for workarounds, and filter-list maintainers responded by adding rules that neutralized the anti-adblock scripts, arguing that some of them doubled as privacy and security risks4.

How to Use This Meme

Users typically install an extension like Adblock Plus from their browser's extension store and let it run in the background1. The default install ships with common filter lists such as EasyList; more aggressive setups often add EasyPrivacy for tracker blocking or extra malware lists, and advanced users can write their own custom filter rules1.