We investigated how advertisement blocking (ad blocking) can be implemented in Android browsers.
Online advertising is growing rapidly. In 2007 online advertising revenues in Germany totaled €976 million, a 103% increase compared to the revenues in 2006. According to Statista, this year a revenue of €6.9 billion is expected in Germany. For users there are various reasons why one would like to block ads. Blocking ads can increase the user experience, decrease data usage, decrease processor load and therefore increase battery life and protect against Malvertising.
The desktop world provides a large set of security tools. This tools usually need high system privileges to fulfill its duties. Ad blocking software is typically provided in form of browser extensions or plugins. Unfortunately, these approaches cannot be directly applied on Android devices. The goal of this project is to evaluate techniques that can be used to block ads on Android. For details please refer to the project report.