Maxthon and Adblock Plus Join Forces, Release First Browser that Blocks Ads Out of the Box

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 10, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Maxthon, a global software company that develops state-of-the-art web browsers, and Adblock Plus, the #1 most popular browser extension for blocking annoying online advertisements, today announced the release of a web browser that includes Adblock Plus' world-renowned adblocking technology. Maxthon with Adblock Plus, now available for PC, offers automatic protection to Maxthon users against annoying ads, including YouTube and Facebook ads, plus a trove of additional features, like protection against user tracking and the increasingly troubling reality of the malware-laden internet advertising known as "malvertising".

"The Internet advertising landscape has evolved from being an annoying experience to something more insidious," said Maxthon founder and CEO Jeff Chen. "This partnership with Adblock Plus provides our users with the best solution available that limits their exposure to 'malvertising' and all of the other forms of annoying tracking and advertising now common on the web."

"Malvertising" is a form of malware distribution where unscrupulous advertisers lure web users into drive-by-downloads of malware through misleading ads or other advertising-based forms of social engineering. A recent study from the University of California Santa Barbara analyzed more than 600,000 different web advertisements to catalogue and categorize the growing threat of "malvertising" and concluded that Adblock Plus is the best defense against it.

The first release will be on Maxthon for Windows-based machines; an Android version will follow.

In addition to blocking annoying ads and "malvertising", the new Maxthon browser with Adblock Plus also: 

• Provides the easiest and most effective way to disable tracking, which gathers information on users' behavior and sells that to advertisers.
• Disables social media tracking so that social networks can't create a profile about the user based on websites visited
• Blocks known malware domains
• Comes with Acceptable Ads technology, which is an industry standard created by Adblock Plus that prevents ads that meet certain user experience criteria from being blocked by Adblock Plus

"Adblock Plus isn't a blunt instrument that simply blocks everything that looks like an ad," says Maxthon VP of International Karl Mattson. "Its technology is intelligent and driven by annoying ad lists crowd-sourced from all over the world. With Maxthon's superior speed and high performance paired up with the industry leader of ad blocking technology, users will have an even more seamless and uncluttered browsing experience devoid of interruptions caused by unnecessary advertisements."

"This is more than just a partnership – it's a new direction in web browsing in which performance and the user meet on the same screen. The idea behind Adblock Plus is not to rid the web of advertising, but to make that advertising acceptable without irritating and obtrusive ads, and to absolutely give users 100 percent control of what they want to see as they browse the Internet," said Till Faida, co-founder of Adblock Plus. "We are very proud to work with Maxthon on this browser."

Download Maxthon with Adblock Plus: http://usa.maxthon.com/maxthon-browser-with-ad-block-plus/

Download Maxthon for Android with Adblock Plus enabled as a beta:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mx.browser

About Maxthon

Maxthon is an innovative software company that develops superior web browsers that continue to set new standards for speed, security, simplicity and cloud features. It is available on the Windows, Android, iOS and Mac platforms. With offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong, Maxthon reaches a global community of users that tops more than 120,000,000 people each month in more than 150 countries. Learn more about Maxthon on www.maxthon.com.

About Adblock Plus

Adblock Plus is an open source project that aims to rid the Internet of annoying and intrusive online advertising. Its free web browser extensions (add-ons) put users in control by letting them block or filter which ads they want to see. Users across the world have downloaded Adblock Plus over 350 million times. It has remained the most downloaded and the most used extension almost continuously since November 2006. In 2013 PC Magazine listed the extension as one of the best free Google Chrome extensions, and it received a 2013 About.com readers' choice award for best privacy/security add-on.

Follow Adblock Plus on Twitter at @AdblockPlus and read our blogs at http://adblockplus.org/blog/. Media press kit with FAQ, images and company statistics is available at: https://eyeo.com/en/press

Contact:

Burson-Marsteller for Maxthon
Lowell Eschen
Lowell.Eschen@BM.com
(+1)212-614-4081

Rocket Science for Adblock Plus
Rich Mullikin, APR
rich@rocketscience.com 
(+1)925-354-7444

SOURCE Maxthon USA Inc