Imagine being able to surf the web and watch videos online without having to swat away pesky pop-up ads?

These days you can, thanks to small programs like Adblock Plus that are available free for download and that arm your browser to defend against ads.

Flashing banner ads, ‘pre-roll’ ads (short ads that play before a video), pop-up notices that cover the whole screen — few of them make it past ad blocking software. In the beginning, the applications acted under the radar, and were known mainly only to young people or the really tech-savvy. But now they’re catching on.

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