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Demystifying content-blockers: A large-scale study of actual performance gains Castell Uroz, Ismael Solé Pareta, Josep Barlet Ros, Pere Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Doctorat en Arquitectura de Computadors Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. Departament d'Arquitectura de Computadors Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. CBA - Sistemes de Comunicacions i Arquitectures de Banda Ampla Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Informàtica::Seguretat informàtica Internet -- Security measures Content-filtering Adblock Advertisement Web tracking Performance Page size Loading time Internet -- Mesures de seguretat With the evolution of the online advertisement and tracking ecosystem, content-filtering has become the reference tool for improving the security, privacy and browsing experience when surfing the Internet. It is also commonly believed that using content-blockers to stop unsolicited content decreases the time needed for loading websites. In this work, we perform a large-scale study with the 100K most popular websites on the actual performance improvements of using content-blockers. We focus our study on two relevant metrics for measuring the browsing performance; page size and loading time. Our results show that using such tools results in small improvements in terms of page size but, contrary to popular belief, it has a negligible impact in terms of loading time. We also find that, in the case of small and lightweight websites, the use of content-blockers can even result in increased loading times. This work was supported by the Spanish MINECO under contract TEC2017-90034-C2-1-R (ALLIANCE). Peer Reviewed Postprint (author's final draft) 2020 Conference report Castell, I.; Solé-Pareta, J.; Barlet, P. Demystifying content-blockers: A large-scale study of actual performance gains. A: International Conference on Network and Service Management. "CNSM 2020, 16th International Conference on Network and Service Management: November 2-6, 2020, virtual conference". Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), 2020, p. 1-7. ISBN 978-3-903176-31-7. DOI 10.23919/CNSM50824.2020.9269094. 978-3-903176-31-7 https://hdl.handle.net/2117/335314 10.23919/CNSM50824.2020.9269094 eng https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9269094 info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/AEI/Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2013-2016/TEC2017-90034-C2-1-R/ES/DISEÑANDO UNA INFRAESTRUCTURA DE RED 5G DEFINIDA MEDIANTE CONOCIMIENTO HACIA LA PROXIMA SOCIEDAD DIGITAL/ Open Access 7 p. application/pdf Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)