Skype. I use it quite a lot, and I’ve been really irritated with the flashy ads that appear, even when resizing the window. As you might know by now, I really dislike ads. Even more so when the ads are irrelevant and aggressive. What I can’t seem to fathom is how a “professional” application like Skype shows such spammy ads.
Luckily, it’s possible to get rid of them in version 7 of Skype.
This is what Skype should look like initially, with 2 kinds of ads depending on the window size.
Disabling them
- Go the the Control Panel
- Go to Network and Internet,
- Then Internet Options.
- Click on the Security tab,
- Then select Restricted sites.
- Type in the text box
apps.skype.comand press Add. Repeat withg.msn.com.
This will already block the ads. Hooray!
Back to Skype you’ll notice that the Home tab loads endlessly. But let’s be honest, who actually uses this tab?
You’ll also find that the placeholder sections for the ads are still visible. We can take it a step further and disable these too.
Disable Skype ad placeholders
- Exit Skype
- Open you Skype folder. It can be accessed quickly by pressing both keys Win+R and type the following:
%appdata%\skype
- Open your username folder, in my case it’s “cyberhacktivist”.
- Once in this folder, locate the file named “config.xml” and open it (an application like Notepad will do).
- Find the line
<AdvertPlaceholder> - Change the value from
<AdvertPlaceholder>1</AdvertPlaceholder>to<AdvertPlaceholder>0</AdvertPlaceholder>
You’ve successfully deleted the ads and the placeholders, no more trace of them! And good riddance!
Just be aware that it is possible that these changes may get overwritten with future updates. You will then have to repeat the procedure.
CyberHacktivist
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