2y ago

This simple trick disables ads in Gmail - but there's a catch

www.zdnet.com This simple trick disables ads in Gmail - but there's a catch

If you depend on Gmail for your email communication, but you're tired of seeing ads in your inbox, there's a simple way to get rid of them, though it may mean swapping one problem for another.

34 comments

There is ads on gmail???
- I’m genuinely shocked that there are people out there that view ads. Between ublock and pihole depending on location I can barely think of the last ads I saw.
  
  Ublock isn't going to block these ads. These ads are those little emails with the ad tag in your Social and Promotions tab, not banner ads or popups.
- I think it's talking about emails in the Promotions tab with the word "ad" in a box at the beginning of the subject line.
  
  Promotion tab?
  Also, if I ever get an ad via mail, it will be immedetly reported as spam. Haven't seen any ads outside my spamfolder for quite awhile.
- Apparently your adblocker is doing overtime
- I've never seen any, but I only ever access it over IMAP.

There are ads in Gmail?
edit: i just disabled adblockers.... still no ads.. Genuinely confused
edit2: OK read the article and none of the settings where there. Just went into my alt gmail account, and I have the ads and the settings mentioned in the article. I guess my main gmail account is so old (2010?) it does not have these features
- Gmail android app had ads for me.
- I'm pretty sure they're talking about the subtle ad disguised as an email in the promotions tab, its not even from someone I wouldn't expect to send me an email, that's why it's so sneaky. It's literally a promotion from a company whose emails I'm subscribed to.
  
  It spread to social tab too.

I've never seen Gmail ads but I also disabled these tabs as soon as they appeared so...
- Yeah, I was confused "People get ads in Gmail?!" and then I remembered that shit bugged me way back, so I disabled them too.

TLDR:
To skirt around the ads, you must disable the Promotions, Social, and Forums tabs. That's where it gets a bit tricky. If you depend on the Social tab to keep you updated on your various social networking feeds, you'll want to keep that enabled, but doing so will not prevent ads from showing up.
- No friends, no problem!
- Tl:dr
  To skirt around the ads, you must disable the Promotions, Social, and Forums tabs.

Email is something where it can be worth a few currency units per yr for a fast / privacy focused email account that doesn’t contribute to your metadata profile.
- Depends on what you do with it. I use it pretty much only for all the accumulated account registrations over the years.
  
  well…with that, google knows where you are, so it can sell you to where you aren’t!
  Most email providers have decent to great aliasing & filters / rules.
- Proton is free. They only have Proton ads. And they also force ads into your outgoing emails.
  
  That is cool. However, for a few bucks a month, one can get an email that is 100% private & fast. Email is worth outsourcing.

Apparently I either already did this so many years ago that I don't remember doing it, or my account is so old (2006) that it predates these settings being added and they defaulted to "off" when added to existing accounts.

34 comments