As an IT person, I’ve been installing blockers on the browsers of everyone I support to reduce the chances of a ‘drive by’ installation of something nasty.

Personally, I started blocking ads aaaages ago — and most browsers let you control which sites can pop up windows. I recently sat down at a PC without a blocker — and I was appalled. I don’t disagree: it’s pretty awful, but there are tools to make things better.

On PC/mobile, look the browser extension ublock-origin to stop ads.

If you care about privacy, add Ghostery or switch browsers to Firefox. On recent versions of Android, I’d recommend Firefox Preview (sounds like some kind of beta, but it’s an actual product).