On 23/07/15 11:16, Chris Green wrote:
On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 08:33:23PM +0100, steve-ALUG@hst.me.uk wrote:
On 22/07/15 17:34, Chris Green wrote:
What Ad blocking plugins do people use here (Firefox on Xubuntu mostly)?
My web browsers go via a network proxy to a server running privoxy My server runs dnsmasq which has a file containing a "block list" containing bad and ad-serving sites
e.g. pgl.yoyo.org/adservers
I have a trivial version of this already (I run dnsmasq on the LAN) so I can extend my "block list". I have apache running too so can redirect to a trivial page like yours.
Yes. I have a cron job that fetches a new block list. It uses sed and a couple of other things to change the format from the website I downloaded from to one that dnsmasq likes. I also filter out a couple of domains that stop useful things from working - trial and error on that I'm afraid.
Be careful that your trivial page doesn't mess up a genuine page on Apache. You could redirect blocked pages to something like 127.0.0.2 which is also a localhost address, and get your webserver to serve a trivial web page on that ip address not on 127.0.0.1.
These sites are redirected to a localhost port that is served by a simple webserver that just serves a page showing "adblock".
On the browser, I use Better privacy flashblock Ghostery
Are these really necessary as well as the dnsmasq block list?
Better Privacy controls flash "supercookies" which some websites use for tracking. If you want flash to work, the block list can't block flash, so you might want this. I do.
Flashblock. I use it because it stops flash auto-playing. I have many webpages open at the same time so if they all start playing at the same time it's mighty annoying. Useful if you use flash.
Ghostery. Well, it spots things that aren't on my blocklist and different things too. The blocklist approach is a crude "hammer to attach a screw" approach. Ghostery is a bit more subtle. Without ghostery, some websites hung for me, presumably because they were trying to communicate with a blocked domain and getting nowhere. With Ghostery, hangs are less frequent as it edits that page source code to removes the communication with the blocked domain (I think).
This cuts out almost all of my ads, but I occasionally get problems, mainly caused by the blocklist/webserver as sometimes a webpage is expecting a response from a ad-site but can't get it because it's been rerouted. When I ran that redirection without ghostery, there were many more problems.
How does ghostery get in on the act before the ad gets redirected by dnsmasq?
Simples: Pseudo Code
Display page header Display page subheading Display some page text " blah blah blah"
Load a jpg advert from BADDOMAIN.COM Set a cookie from TRACKYOUREVERYMOVE.COM Communicate with TAILORED_ADS.COM to serve a ad depending on your browsing history.
Display some page text " blah blah blah" end of page.
Without ghostery, "Load a jpg advert from BADDOMAIN.COM" will probably be intercepted by the blocklist
"Set a cookie from TRACKYOUREVERYMOVE.COM" may be intercepted by the blocklist
"Communicate with TAILORED_ADS.COM to serve a ad depending on your browsing history." might hang waiting for a response.
With Ghostery, ghostery will look at the page source, and probably deal with these pages (comment them out) so the blocklist won't have to.
Hope that makes sense.
Steve