I’ve been using both the Nord’s app, as well as browser addon, and have the Threat Protection enabled by default. Since I simultaneously use other ad blocker addons on Firefox (UBlock Origin; Ad Blocker Plus), I never noticed the exact capabilities and use cases of the ad blocker function the Threat Protection provides. Here I compared the browsing experience using only Nord’s Threat Protection against dedicated ad blocker addons:
Ad blocker testers
I used 2 particular ad blocker testers test.adminforge.de/adblock.html and d3ward.github.io/toolz/adblock.html - to determine the ad/tracker blocking accuracy. The Threat Protection does a pretty good job blocking ad hosts, while leaving more than half of the tracker hosts unblocked, as well as missing the ad scripts within the page. The overall score using Threat Protection was 52-75% across both the ad blocker testers. Both the Ad Blocker Plus and UBlock Origin scored 95-100% as expected, ticking the majority of the boxes in the tests.
General browsing experience
Checked various news sites (Wired, Cnet, Yahoo, etc.), as well as torrent sites and was surprised by the amount of ad banners, pop-ups, and redirects blocked by Threat Protection. Unfortunately, it’s not able to block YouTube ads, although, looking at the recent YouTube’s ad blocker crackdown, doing so will get more complicated even with dedicated ad blocker addons. As I’ve figured, Threat Protection is essentially a DNS filter (at least that’s how it works on the Nord’s app), therefore, it’s unable to block ads that are embedded within the website’s script.
All in all, Threat Protection does indeed provide a safer and cleaner browsing experience for the everyday user. However, it will not change the dedicated ad blocker addons, so I’ll stick with using both of them simultaneously.
Would be happy to hear about the ad blocking alternatives you have tried out! Also, let me know if YouTube’s ad blocker crackdown has reached you, I’d gladly share my experience in avoiding these ads.