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#1
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Pi-hole dot net and hardware ad blocking
An Interesting thing to come up in my feed. quote: PRIVACY: Inside the Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers. Anyone who works in the $200 billion digital advertising industry should be scared of people like Mark Drobnak, because the ad blocker he uses is way more powerful than yours. The college freshman says it feels as though everyone at Rochester Institute of Technology, from his roommate to his professors, has installed some way to ward off online ads. Drobnak is one of the die-hards who goes further, working with a handful of comrades to build what they call “a black hole for advertisements.” His parents say the one he built them works great. Pi-hole (as in “shut your?…”) is a free, open source software package designed to run on a Raspberry Pi, a basic computer that’s popular with DIYers, fits in the palm of your hand, and retails for about $35. Most ad blockers have to be installed on individual devices and work only in web browsers, but Pi-hole blocks ads across an entire network, including in most apps. Interesting. I get similar results taming the most obnoxious sites using a customizable JavaScript blocker, but it can be tedious to set up and the results aren’t always easy to predict. I’ve thought about picking up a cheap PC and setting it up as a Ubuntu-based web server with ad and tracking firewalls installed, but the effort-to-reward ratio still breaks on my lazy side. But Pi-Hole installed on a $35 Raspberry Pi is awfully tempting. Endquote. https://pi-hole.net/ Comments from the technoratti? -- pyotr filipivich The question was asked: "Is Hindsight overrated?" In retrospect, it appears to be. --- This email has been checked for viruses by AVG. http://www.avg.com |
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#2
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Pi-hole dot net and hardware ad blocking
pyotr filipivich wrote:
An Interesting thing to come up in my feed. quote: PRIVACY: Inside the Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers. Anyone who works in the $200 billion digital advertising industry should be scared of people like Mark Drobnak, because the ad blocker he uses is way more powerful than yours. The college freshman says it feels as though everyone at Rochester Institute of Technology, from his roommate to his professors, has installed some way to ward off online ads. Drobnak is one of the die-hards who goes further, working with a handful of comrades to build what they call “a black hole for advertisements.” His parents say the one he built them works great. Pi-hole (as in “shut your?…”) is a free, open source software package designed to run on a Raspberry Pi, a basic computer that’s popular with DIYers, fits in the palm of your hand, and retails for about $35. Most ad blockers have to be installed on individual devices and work only in web browsers, but Pi-hole blocks ads across an entire network, including in most apps. Interesting. I get similar results taming the most obnoxious sites using a customizable JavaScript blocker, but it can be tedious to set up and the results aren’t always easy to predict. I’ve thought about picking up a cheap PC and setting it up as a Ubuntu-based web server with ad and tracking firewalls installed, but the effort-to-reward ratio still breaks on my lazy side. But Pi-Hole installed on a $35 Raspberry Pi is awfully tempting. Endquote. https://pi-hole.net/ Comments from the technoratti? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featu...le-ad-blockers I think you're saying, you want a "full time hobby" ? Paul |
#3
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Pi-hole dot net and hardware ad blocking
"pyotr filipivich" wrote
| | https://pi-hole.net/ | | Comments from the technoratti? Less than meets the eye. You need to set it up on something Linux, and it's nothing really new. It uses several HOSTS-type files, found in adlists.default, in the download package: https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole/archive/master.zip A HOSTS file on Windows does similar. Windows also has DNS proxy software available, such as Acrylic. (pi-hole is a DNS proxy. A set of scripts, with no finished interface as far as I can tell. You just run the install command and then their list decides what you block, without your intervention.) Acrylic allows wildcards in its HOSTS file, so it's fairly easy to set up a very efficient blocking list. And it's easy to edit. No command line nonsense. Acrylic also has the appeal of not having a crass name invented by a teenager. The pi-hole approach is highly inefficient. Example: Here's the list of HOSTS-type files they use: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/St...s/master/hosts https://mirror1.malwaredomains.com/files/justdomains http://sysctl.org/cameleon/hosts https://zeustracker.abuse.ch/blockli...omainblocklist https://s3.amazonaws.com/lists.disco...e_tracking.txt https://s3.amazonaws.com/lists.disco.../simple_ad.txt https://hosts-file.net/ad_servers.txt That's 7 HOSTS-like files ll fed through their script. The last one alone is 1.68 MB. It has over 12,000 entries for Doubleclick! Over 3,500 entries for atdmt.com. Though most seem to have an odd format ending with 302br.net. I've never seen 302br.net before. Yet that block list has some 15,000 versions of its URL. Similarly, there are lots of 2o7.net, which is a Google spyware/adware alias. Many advertisers will have a separate URL, or more than one, for each client. Things like 32441.nyt-ads.liveclick.net (I just made that up.) You only need that in your list if you like to go to the NYT website. Then you'll probably also need dozens of others. 32442, 3243k, and so on. A new one every time they generate a new randomly named subdomain. But with Acrylic you can stop all that with just a few lines: 127.0.0.1 *.google-analytics.com 127.0.0.1 *.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 *.doubleclick.com # There's all of doubleclick in 2 lines. 127.0.0.1 *.302br.net 127.0.0.1 *.2o7.net 127.0.0.1 *.atdmt.com I occasionally download especially commercial pages to check for new spyware companies, but mostly it's the same culprits on every site. Google/ Doubleclick, scorecardresearch, etc. What about fonts.googleapis.com? You may want to allow web fonts and you may want to allow that domain. If so then you're giving Google enough data to track most of your activity online. Does pi-hole block that? I don't know, but probably not. Does it block Facebook and Twitter tracking bugs? Probably not, since most people want to be able to reach those websites. In other words, with a basic Windows DNS proxy that blocks with wildcards, you can easily block almost everything that matters. And you don't need to buy a raspberry pi or get into a mess of Linux scripts. I don't remember the last time I saw an ad, and all I use is Acrylic. But I never saw ads even before Acrylic, with about 300 entries in my HOSTS file. It's efficient to use that method because the spyware and ads are extremely centralized. (That's also what makes them so pernicious. There are numerous domains that can track almost everything you do because they load something on almost every page you visit.) |
#4
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Pi-hole dot net and hardware ad blocking
Paul on Fri, 18 May 2018 17:09:18 -0400 typed
in alt.windows7.general the following: pyotr filipivich wrote: An Interesting thing to come up in my feed. quote: PRIVACY: Inside the Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers. Anyone who works in the $200 billion digital advertising industry should be scared of people like Mark Drobnak, because the ad blocker he uses is way more powerful than yours. The college freshman says it feels as though everyone at Rochester Institute of Technology, from his roommate to his professors, has installed some way to ward off online ads. Drobnak is one of the die-hards who goes further, working with a handful of comrades to build what they call “a black hole for advertisements.” His parents say the one he built them works great. Pi-hole (as in “shut your?…”) is a free, open source software package designed to run on a Raspberry Pi, a basic computer that’s popular with DIYers, fits in the palm of your hand, and retails for about $35. Most ad blockers have to be installed on individual devices and work only in web browsers, but Pi-hole blocks ads across an entire network, including in most apps. Interesting. I get similar results taming the most obnoxious sites using a customizable JavaScript blocker, but it can be tedious to set up and the results aren’t always easy to predict. I’ve thought about picking up a cheap PC and setting it up as a Ubuntu-based web server with ad and tracking firewalls installed, but the effort-to-reward ratio still breaks on my lazy side. But Pi-Hole installed on a $35 Raspberry Pi is awfully tempting. Endquote. https://pi-hole.net/ Comments from the technoratti? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/featu...le-ad-blockers I think you're saying, you want a "full time hobby" ? Well, yes I do. But I do not think that is the one I really want. Not yet anyway. Paul -- pyotr filipivich Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing? |
#5
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Pi-hole dot net and hardware ad blocking
"Mayayana" on Fri, 18 May 2018 18:34:59
-0400 typed in alt.windows7.general the following: "pyotr filipivich" wrote | | https://pi-hole.net/ | | Comments from the technoratti? Less than meets the eye. You need to set it up on something Linux, and it's nothing really new. It uses several HOSTS-type files, found in adlists.default, in the download package: Thanks for the input. I will read it more thoughtfully. For the nonce, let me say "Sounds cool, but sounds like more 'hobby' than I want. -- pyotr filipivich Next month's Panel: Graft - Boon or blessing? |
#6
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Pi-hole dot net and hardware ad blocking
pyotr filipivich wrote:
An Interesting thing to come up in my feed. quote: PRIVACY: Inside the Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers. Anyone who works in the $200 billion digital advertising industry should be scared of people like Mark Drobnak, because the ad blocker he uses is way more powerful than yours. The college freshman says it feels as though everyone at Rochester Institute of Technology, from his roommate to his professors, has installed some way to ward off online ads. Drobnak is one of the die-hards who goes further, working with a handful of comrades to build what they call “a black hole for advertisements.” His parents say the one he built them works great. Pi-hole (as in “shut your?…”) is a free, open source software package designed to run on a Raspberry Pi, a basic computer that’s popular with DIYers, fits in the palm of your hand, and retails for about $35. Most ad blockers have to be installed on individual devices and work only in web browsers, but Pi-hole blocks ads across an entire network, including in most apps. Interesting. I get similar results taming the most obnoxious sites using a customizable JavaScript blocker, but it can be tedious to set up and the results aren’t always easy to predict. I’ve thought about picking up a cheap PC and setting it up as a Ubuntu-based web server with ad and tracking firewalls installed, but the effort-to-reward ratio still breaks on my lazy side. But Pi-Hole installed on a $35 Raspberry Pi is awfully tempting. Endquote. https://pi-hole.net/ Comments from the technoratti? While most adblockers work as extensions to web browsers (and some web browsers have them built-in) because that is obviously the most prone vector for presenting ads from the web, it is not the only way to block unwanted content. Adblockers can work as local proxies through which your network (mostly web) traffic will get filtered. For example, there are proxy adblockers for Android phones. Alas, you have to root them to get them to work. For those that don't want to root their phones, there is DNS66 which has your phone use an ad-filtering DNS server: DNS requests to ad sources get blocked. Alas, while active, the Play Store app won't work (can't get apps, can't update them). For obvious reasons, DNS66 is not available in Google's Play Store because it thwarts Google's Analytics revenue. The claim to block ads across an entire network obviously means the device with the adblocking as a filtering proxy must be upstream of all other devices. That is, that host with the adblock proxy is the gateway for all other hosts. Again, nothing new there. "No client-side software required". Well, that just means the filtering is done upstream, like with DNS66 where you merely reconfigure your host(s) to use a different DNS server. OpenDNS, DNS66, and plenty of other DNS providers already supply filtering. OpenDNS lets you choose by categories of what you want to block (but I don't remember if ad filtering are specifically supported). DNS66 simply uses the same DNSBLs (DNS blocklists) that the web browser extensions use locally. "Install by running one command". Huh? The site just said no client-side software gets installed. So what does install.pi-hole.net have for a script? The command gets piped into bash. That's is because that web page presents a bash script, so the online script gets download and piped into the bash interpreter. It's been about 20 years since I last did any bash scripting and it probably wasn't as complicated as this one, but my guess from the following line is that it changes the DNS server assignment in your OS: # We need to know the IPv4 information so we can effectively setup the DNS server # Without this information, we won't know where to Pi-hole will be found So it looks like the same old DNS filtering that has been available for a l-o-n-g time either via DNS providers, similar to DNS66 with their own DNS server for the DNSBLs they choose to use. I suspect you could roll your own using the Acrylic DNS proxy on your own gateway host on your intranet rather than relying on the filtering definitions of a 3rd party DNS provider, especially one that really isn't a commercial enterprise but instead a hobby project. |
#7
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Pi-hole dot net and hardware ad blocking
On Fri, 18 May 2018 12:59:08 -0700, pyotr filipivich
wrote: But Pi-Hole installed on a $35 Raspberry Pi is awfully tempting. Endquote. https://pi-hole.net/ Comments from the technoratti? Others have provided some of the cons, with which I don't disagree. One of the pros, however, is that it's positioned as a single solution that works with every web-enabled device on your LAN, including smartphones and smart TVs, and none of your devices has to know how to use it other than pointing their DNS entry at it. No hosts files to play with, no multiple configurations for multiple browsers, etc. The one thing I didn't see mentioned is the increasingly common and obnoxious behavior of sites that are configured to notice, in a big way, that you're downloading their content but not their ads. Some of them replace the content with a big message that says, in effect, "Hey, we see that you're using an ad blocker. Cut it out!" I'm not sure how this solution addresses that, but I didn't read very far into it. If it was a full proxy, it could download ads and drop them on the floor rather than passing them on to you, but it's only a DNS proxy so it can't do that. -- Char Jackson |
#8
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Pi-hole dot net and hardware ad blocking
On Fri, 18 May 2018 20:27:58 -0500, VanguardLH wrote:
pyotr filipivich wrote: An Interesting thing to come up in my feed. quote: PRIVACY: Inside the Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers. Anyone who works in the $200 billion digital advertising industry should be scared of people like Mark Drobnak, because the ad blocker he uses is way more powerful than yours. The college freshman says it feels as though everyone at Rochester Institute of Technology, from his roommate to his professors, has installed some way to ward off online ads. Drobnak is one of the die-hards who goes further, working with a handful of comrades to build what they call “a black hole for advertisements.” His parents say the one he built them works great. Pi-hole (as in “shut your?…”) is a free, open source software package designed to run on a Raspberry Pi, a basic computer that’s popular with DIYers, fits in the palm of your hand, and retails for about $35. Most ad blockers have to be installed on individual devices and work only in web browsers, but Pi-hole blocks ads across an entire network, including in most apps. Interesting. I get similar results taming the most obnoxious sites using a customizable JavaScript blocker, but it can be tedious to set up and the results aren’t always easy to predict. I’ve thought about picking up a cheap PC and setting it up as a Ubuntu-based web server with ad and tracking firewalls installed, but the effort-to-reward ratio still breaks on my lazy side. But Pi-Hole installed on a $35 Raspberry Pi is awfully tempting. Endquote. https://pi-hole.net/ Comments from the technoratti? While most adblockers work as extensions to web browsers (and some web browsers have them built-in) because that is obviously the most prone vector for presenting ads from the web, it is not the only way to block unwanted content. Adblockers can work as local proxies through which your network (mostly web) traffic will get filtered. For example, there are proxy adblockers for Android phones. Alas, you have to root them to get them to work. For those that don't want to root their phones, there is DNS66 which has your phone use an ad-filtering DNS server: DNS requests to ad sources get blocked. Alas, while active, the Play Store app won't work (can't get apps, can't update them). For obvious reasons, DNS66 is not available in Google's Play Store because it thwarts Google's Analytics revenue. The claim to block ads across an entire network obviously means the device with the adblocking as a filtering proxy must be upstream of all other devices. That is, that host with the adblock proxy is the gateway for all other hosts. Again, nothing new there. It's a DNS proxy, so it doesn't have to be upstream. It just has to be reachable. It doesn't even have to be on your LAN. No actual content traffic runs through it. It only sees DNS traffic. "No client-side software required". Well, that just means the filtering is done upstream, like with DNS66 where you merely reconfigure your host(s) to use a different DNS server. Right, as a DNS proxy, its role is to filter/block/deny any requests for what it thinks are ads, apparently using DNSBLs. "Install by running one command". Huh? The site just said no client-side software gets installed. That's to install it on your shiny pi, not on any of your hosts. All your hosts need is to swing the DNS server over, or you could do that in your gateway device if you want a one-and-done solution. -- Char Jackson |
#9
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Pi-hole dot net and hardware ad blocking
"Char Jackson" wrote
| The one thing I didn't see mentioned is the increasingly common and | obnoxious behavior of sites that are configured to notice, in a big way, | that you're downloading their content but not their ads. Some of them | replace the content with a big message that says, in effect, "Hey, we | see that you're using an ad blocker. Cut it out!" I've yet to see that. Maybe it requires javascript to work. (Which I generally don't enable.) That seems like poetic justice: They need javascript to spy on you but they also need javascript to check whether you're letting them spy. But I do come across an increasing number of sites that are broken without script. Some are not usable at all but many work fine if I also disable CSS. They do things like cover the page with a gray rectangle, or pile things on top of each other, or make some of the content non-visible. Then those deliberate screw-ups are fixed by script when the page loads. It's a rather odd strategy. Those sites never tell me I need to enable script. They just try to make sure the page is broken without script. |
#10
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Pi-hole dot net and hardware ad blocking
In message , Mayayana
writes: [] Acrylic allows wildcards in its HOSTS file, so it's fairly [] 127.0.0.1 *.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 *.doubleclick.com # There's all of doubleclick in 2 lines. [] I think I asked once before couldn't it could be just _one_ line, 0 *.doubleclick.* (or possibly without the dots), but I don't remember the answer. -- J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf I remember a lot of questions on a vocalist forum about the problems singing "There is a balm in Gilead" without making it sound like a security alert. - Linda Fox in UMRA, 2010-11-19 |
#11
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Pi-hole dot net and hardware ad blocking
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote
| 127.0.0.1 *.doubleclick.net | 127.0.0.1 *.doubleclick.com | # There's all of doubleclick in 2 lines. | [] | I think I asked once before couldn't it could be just _one_ line, | 0 *.doubleclick.* | (or possibly without the dots), but I don't remember the answer. Yes, that sounds familiar. If I remember correctly, it turned out that Acrylic can handle RegExp, so you can do all kinds of things. These two samples are included in its HOSTS file: # 127.0.0.1 ad.*ads.* # 127.0.0.1 /^ads?\..*$ In general I don't know how useful RegExp would be here. Or even multiple wildcards. I find a subdomain wildcard is adequate and I like to keep it simple. Filtering on strings like "ads" or "banner" used to be common, but that was back in the days when ads were coming from the same URL as the webpage. But, yes, there seems to be no limit to how much you can customize and specialize with the Acrylic HOSTS file. |
#12
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Pi-hole dot net and hardware ad blocking
Mayayana wrote:
: Char Jackson wrote : :: The one thing I didn't see mentioned is the increasingly common and :: obnoxious behavior of sites that are configured to notice, in a big way, :: that you're downloading their content but not their ads. Some of them :: replace the content with a big message that says, in effect, "Hey, we :: see that you're using an ad blocker. Cut it out!" : : I've yet to see that. Maybe it requires javascript to work. (Which I : generally don't enable.) That seems like poetic justice: They need : javascript to spy on you but they also need javascript to check : whether you're letting them spy. No, you have a connection to them so your IP address is known during your session with the site. If your client refuses to get their ad content using that IP address during your session with them, they can detect your client is not retrieving all content and only some of it. The site will cooperate with the off-domain site (theirs or someone else's) to see if you went there to get that content. They can do that whether or not Javascript is enabled/available in your client or not. A problem with the server-side detection is the assumption that CDNs (content delivery networks) seldom go down. If the CDN doesn't notify the target site that you visited the CDN then the target site assumes you blocked that content and pukes out its alarm. If the CDN is down, the site might not yet know and puke out the same alarm despite you are not using an adblocker. Also, Javascript is lightweight versus server- side cooperative detection requires more effort to setup, maintain, and to operate - but ad content is big business representing lots of money. The backend detection requires more effort and cooperation than using Javascript within the delivered web page. For example, the page may encapsulate an ad within a div where the ad content then specifies the size of the div element. If the Javascript sees the div has zero height then the Javascript knows the ad content did not get retrieved. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/new...block-scripts/ Of course, you could modify the page's Javascript hoping not to break it. You could also disable Javascript but we all know the effect of that: the page is empty or nearly worthless. Sites have moved to dynamic page content which replies on scripting to decide what the page will contain. For sites that rely on only Javascript, there are adblocker-blocker DNSBLs and extensions that modify the page to remove the checker script (since often the sites are investing in a 3rd party to give them the adblocker detection). I've tried a couple of the adblocker-blocker DNSBLs but they don't seem very effective probably due to the server- side detection and cooperation with the CDNs to see if you retrieved that off-domain content. Example of an adblocker-blocker (aka anti-adblocker) DNSBL: uBlock Filters - Unbreak Example of an adblocker-blocker extension: https://github.com/reek/anti-adblock-killer Greasemonkey or Tampermonkey (modify the scripts in the delivered page) Neither of which will help with server-side cooperative detection. If you don't retrieve it, they can know. |
#13
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Pi-hole dot net and hardware ad blocking
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
Mayayana WROTE: Acrylic allows wildcards in its HOSTS file, so it's fairly 127.0.0.1 *.doubleclick.net 127.0.0.1 *.doubleclick.com # There's all of doubleclick in 2 lines. I think I asked once before couldn't it could be just _one_ line, 0 *.doubleclick.* (or possibly without the dots), but I don't remember the answer. The hosts file lists *hosts*, not domains. That is why it is called a hosts file. There is no wildcarding. The hosts file was not created for the purpose of adblocking. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_(file) It was originally created to facilitate finding on intranet hosts without having to access a DNS server, like having a short grocery shopping list of what you want to buy rather than the entire grocery store's inventory and checking off just the items you want to buy. That Acrylic allows wildcarding is unique to that proxy in its interpretation of the content of the hosts file. If you modify the hosts file to add wildcarding, the DNS client or anything else reading the hosts file won't know how to parse it because of the illegal syntax. http://mayakron.altervista.org/wikib...d=AcrylicFAQ#3 "Putting a large number of patterns or regular expressions inside the AcrylicHosts.txt file may cause Acrylic to slow down significantly." So it is not the hosts file where you can use wildcarding. It is Acrylic's own hosts file (acrylichosts.txt) where you can use wildcarding. This is confirmed also at the following page: http://mayakron.altervista.org/wikib...d=AcrylicHosts Also mentioned in the first article: "A domain name is free, a pattern is relatively cheap and a regular expression is rather expensive." I don't use Acrylic to know how it differentiates "pattern" from "regular expression" (other than DOS wildcarding is *not* the same as regex). "pattern" isn't mentioned in the 2nd article describing syntax within the AcrylicHosts.txt file. Maybe you could specify multiple wildcards but I've always found that has side effects of matching on substrings you didn't intend. Wildcarding tends to be sloppy. Instead you could use regex, as in "^(\S+\.)?doubleclick\.(com|net)$". From the above wiki page, use of regex is slower due to the parsing and substring functions. You can get pretty damn complicated with regex. |
#14
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Pi-hole dot net and hardware ad blocking
"VanguardLH" wrote
| The hosts file lists *hosts*, not domains. That is why it is called a | hosts file. There is no wildcarding. The hosts file was not created | for the purpose of adblocking. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_(file) | | That Acrylic allows wildcarding is unique to that proxy in its | interpretation of the content of the hosts file. | | I don't use Acrylic... Yet you're determined to explain it. John understands. And probably everyone else here does, too, without needing links to the history of HOSTS files. If you want to understand then why not just read the instructions in Acrylic HOSTS rather than posting all this stuff that everyone already knows? |
#15
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Pi-hole dot net and hardware ad blocking
"VanguardLH" wrote
| : I've yet to see that. Maybe it requires javascript to work. (Which I | : generally don't enable.) That seems like poetic justice: They need | : javascript to spy on you but they also need javascript to check | : whether you're letting them spy. | | No, you have a connection to them so your IP address is known during | your session with the site. If your client refuses to get their ad | content using that IP address during your session with them, they can | detect your client is not retrieving all content and only some of it. | The site will cooperate with the off-domain site (theirs or someone | else's) to see if you went there to get that content. They can do that | whether or not Javascript is enabled/available in your client or not. | In theory. But that's unlikely. Sending data requests back and forth to 3rd parties with every page request would put a significant load on their traffic and processing. It makes much more sense to just write script that puts all the load on the visitor. Something like a heavily obfuscated version of... "Go to xyz, send them this data, and load the ad from xyz.com. If that fails then show a nasty message." It's all built into the javascript in that case. And as I said, I've never had a site show me with a message about blocking ads. I know you hate to have your beliefs contradicted by other peoples' experience. You find your beliefs so devilishly delicious. Second only to your opinions in their ability to transfix you with pleasure. But thems the facts. Think about what you're claiming. I visit a site. They contact their 6 ad servers and spyware partners to see if I'm loading the ads. But I can only load ads after I've loaded the page. Without script, how are they going to block the page they just gave me while they wait 3 seconds for the other servers to respond? And who's going to wait 3 seconds for a page to load these days? (The webmaster rule of thumb is that if your page takes more than 1/4 second, people will start to leave.) I guess they could track me to take revenge on the next page. But I've also never seen a blank page that says, "AHA! Caught ya! You script-blocking, ad-evading son of a gun!" | https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/new...block-scripts/ | This contradicts your original farfetched claim that websites will get around my disabling script by contacting the ad server from the backend and asking whether they see my IP address. This article is talking about adblock blocking scripts. (This is hilarious. There's adblock, anti-adblock, and anti-anti-adblock.) | | Of course, you could modify the page's Javascript hoping not to break | it. You could also disable Javascript but we all know the effect of | that: the page is empty or nearly worthless. Now you're off on another of your huffy pronouncements and not paying attention to my original statement: I don't get blocked for blocking ads because I don't enable script. It's all in the script. You live in a world of escalating arms war, using ublock origin. I just use a HOSTS file. You may insist that's not possible, but I'm doing it. I just visited blockadblock.com and downloaded their adblock blocker script. (The compound obfuscation is stunning.) They're using script to block ad blockers but it's all dependent on CSS. Without CSS their pages are perfectly functional. You may not want to view pages with No Style, but I increasingly find it's often better. Some examples of my browsing: WashPo, npr.org, TheRegister, Slashdot, Wired, alternet.org, infoworld, duckduckgo, Google, stackoverflow and most other online programming info sites.... They all currently work fine without script. Theatlantic.com is a mess. Headlines on top of each other. But it's fine with no style. Similarly, Ars Technica redesigned their site and I only see 2-3 headlines unless I disable CSS. But then it's fine. Some sites I visit are blank. Then I disable CSS. That makes for a plain page, but actually I find that I'm increasingly disabling CSS even when I don't need to. Example: I go to WashPo and see a normal homepage, with article links. I click a link and see a normal article. But there's one problem. The font is serif, 18px high, with triple line spacing! It's like reading a billboard from 6 feet away. Why? I don't know. Maybe they're catering to phones? In any case, I often find it easier to switch to no style and read the article in simple, 12px verdana. A few sites are actually completely broken. I used to sometimes read business articles at forbes.com. Their site is now broken. The webpage content itself is embedded in script! But Forbes was never a great news source, anyway. Nothing lost there. WSJ takes another approach. They let you read a teaser, maybe 2 paragraphs. Then they want you to sign up. So I don't go to WSJ. What this boils down to is that they're refusing to allow access to their website unless you allow them to run a rather large software program on your computer. It's an end-run version of a push webpage. I'm not going to allow push webpages. Good riddance to them. It's one thing to pay for a newspaper. It's another thing entirely to be recorded while you read the paper and to have the article dynamically change in order to get me to look at ads. Why would anyone put up with that once they realize it's happening? (Well, OK, millions of Facebookie addicts put up with it. | Sites have moved to | dynamic page content which replies on scripting to decide what the page | will contain. | Bingo. So they decide what news you'll read, what price you'll pay when you shop, what search results you'll see.... Apparently you don't care if their page is bull**** as long as you don't have to see ads? I do care, and I'm not accepting this push-webpage sleight of hand. I suggest that anyone who doesn't want to live on a push-based, spyware Web might want to consciously consider what their response should be. If you allow script then you're handing your browser (and security, and privacy) over to the sites you visit, along with "every Tom, Dick and Harry" business partner they have. |
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