2026-04-14T03:06:24Zhttps://recercat.cat/oai/request

oai:recercat.cat:2117/3353142026-01-21T07:54:38Zcom_2072_1033col_2072_452950

Demystifying content-blockers: A large-scale study of actual performance gains Castell Uroz, Ismael Solé Pareta, Josep Barlet Ros, Pere 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 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 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)