Obnoxious ad autoplaying with sound on Economist.com

Question

I have a tab open to a page on the Economist website and twice a day it's suddenly playing this obnoxious ad which autoplays with sound.

The only words I remember from it are "$15,000" and "life partner". Weirdly, I even tried clicking on it but nothing happened. Also, weirdly, it cuts off mid-video and switches to another ad. Maybe someone uploaded the wrong file as an ad.

Anyway, how can I stop ads like this autoplaying with sound? It's very annoying! I use Chrome on Linux.

Answer 1

This ad was actually installed by a Chrome extension I had installed, called "Tweet this page", which has now become malware. I uninstalled that extension and the ads went away.

The clue was it said "Ad not from this site". I wasn't sure what that meant, but it turned out it meant the ad was injected by malware.

Answer 2

Type chrome://settings/content in your address bar and then press enter.

In the scrollable "Content Settings" panel that opens, scroll down to "Plug-ins" and click on "Click to play".

From now on, all plugins, including Flash, will wait for you to click them before they run.

Alternatively, if you want more granular control, install something like AdBlock Plus and then seek help on its official forum if you can't figure out how to block something.