TownNews (townnews.com)
“INN Partners, L.C., doing business as TownNews.com, provides online publishing and revenue solutions to news websites.” – Source
Ethical design violations
(Learn more about Ethical Design.)
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tracker
Monetises you.
Block rule
Block ads on townnews.com
TownNews.com is used by quite a lot of local news sites not only to serve ads but also as a content delivery network (CDN). We specifically want to block the tracking without effecting the experience of the site as much as possible so we are targetting the ad-specific scripts only.
townnews\.com/.*/.*ads.*
Clean up the experience
TownNews.com affiliate sites all use the same markup, so let’s help improve the experience on the ones that we know.
- trigger:
- url-filter: .*
- action:
- selector: .tnt-ads, .dfp-ad
- type: css-display-none
Prevalence
Moderate: found on 0.6% of surveyed sites (44 instances observed).
Notes
- A whois lookup shows townnews.com is owned by INN Partners.
- “Cookies can also enable us to track and target the interests of our users…” Source
- “The company offers BLOX Classifieds that provides tools to compete for local listings; BLOX Ad-Owl that streamlines the creation, processing, and scheduling of Web, print, and mobile classified advertisement for advertisers and staff; and BLOX Editorial System that allows the client to add various types of content, including articles, images, videos, galleries, and others. It also provides BLOX Banner Ad System, a solution to manage banner advertisement on sites; BLOX Metering, which allows users to access a limited amount of content each month before they’re asked to pay;” Source
About Better
Better is a Safari content blocker for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. It protects you from trackers and malvertising by enforcing the principles of Ethical Design.