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Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

pi-hole.net

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Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#41

Post by Bedon292 »

fwn wrote: post #33
nkkollaw wrote: post #30

With all the ad blocking technologies that are coming up, I wonder if Google is devising something to counteract these efforts. For instance, since browser-based ad blockers work from what I know by blocking known domain names, couldn't Google create random subdomains and serve the code from a different subdomain every day or even every few hours, as well as change the way their JavaScript and HTML looks? Even someth…

Since all the popular filter lists are public, you could even scan them on the fly to evaluate your likelihood of being blocked. But in the end you probably won't win against someone who really hates ads. - and that's probably better for users as well as advertisers.

That's another good point. The people who are actively blocking ads are probably not the ones going to click them, even if they are not blocked. So not worth the money to invest in unblocking the ads going to people who aren't going to click them.

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#43

Post by [deleted] »

vxNsr wrote: post #29

How are people dealing with whitelisting when a website becomes broken because of an over zealous block. I find myself turning off ublock for some websites at least once a day, not because there are ads on the page but because they're issuing a dependency somewhere that has been blacklisted.

[deleted]

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#44

Post by SamBam »

Bedon292 wrote: post #38
nkkollaw wrote: post #30

With all the ad blocking technologies that are coming up, I wonder if Google is devising something to counteract these efforts. For instance, since browser-based ad blockers work from what I know by blocking known domain names, couldn't Google create random subdomains and serve the code from a different subdomain every day or even every few hours, as well as change the way their JavaScript and HTML looks? Even someth…

You would just block *.addomain.com at that point. Which is already what is being done on many of the blockers. There will always be domains to block, even if they add new domains, the blockers will probably be able to block them just as fast.

How about if they load them through *.google.com?

Sure, you could whitelist www.google.com, mail.google.com, etc, but couldn't they keep ahead of you if they were ok with using their main domain? They could even start using www.google.com/ad-id

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#45

Post by Bedon292 »

wtfishackernews wrote: post #36
vxNsr wrote: post #29

How are people dealing with whitelisting when a website becomes broken because of an over zealous block. I find myself turning off ublock for some websites at least once a day, not because there are ads on the page but because they're issuing a dependency somewhere that has been blacklisted.

Through the admin console, you can whitelist domains or disable all blocking for a given amount of time.

Yeah, first think I did after setting up pi-hole was go and visit all my primary sites, and see what was being blocked. Then white listed things I was OK with, or things that were breaking sites.

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#46

Post by ggcdn »

nkkollaw wrote: post #30

With all the ad blocking technologies that are coming up, I wonder if Google is devising something to counteract these efforts. For instance, since browser-based ad blockers work from what I know by blocking known domain names, couldn't Google create random subdomains and serve the code from a different subdomain every day or even every few hours, as well as change the way their JavaScript and HTML looks? Even someth…

Could the website server make the requests to the ad networks, then serve the responses as if it were native content?

Current browser-based blocking tech would be rendered useless, right?

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#47

Post by wtfishackernews »

toad_tyrrant wrote: post #31
wtfishackernews wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not strictly useful for yourself, but you could run a tor relay https://www.torproject.org/docs/tor-doc-relay.html.en

That is a decent idea. I have never used Tor though, and I can't say I know the consequences of running a relay. So I'd probably skip that.

As long as you don't run an exit relay, it should be completely safe and legal. The EFF has a good write-up about it https://www.eff.org/torchallenge/what-is-tor.html

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#48

Post by legohead »

nkkollaw wrote: post #30

With all the ad blocking technologies that are coming up, I wonder if Google is devising something to counteract these efforts. For instance, since browser-based ad blockers work from what I know by blocking known domain names, couldn't Google create random subdomains and serve the code from a different subdomain every day or even every few hours, as well as change the way their JavaScript and HTML looks? Even someth…

Ad blockers do a lot more than just block domains. They look for and remove divs/DOM elements that contain known ad naming schemes and remove them from the page.

And if a site decides to start combating the ad blockers, the adblock list providers will update their rules specifically for the site in question. Adblock users get upset whenever they see ads, and report them pretty quickly.

The business I work for tried blocking adblockers and after a bit of back and forth they trumped us by blocking all AJAX requests on our site. We gave in after that.

Re: Pi-hole – A black hole for Internet advertisements

#49

Post by SamBam »

Bedon292 wrote: post #41
fwn wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since all the popular filter lists are public, you could even scan them on the fly to evaluate your likelihood of being blocked. But in the end you probably won't win against someone who really hates ads. - and that's probably better for users as well as advertisers.

That's another good point. The people who are actively blocking ads are probably not the ones going to click them, even if they are not blocked. So not worth the money to invest in unblocking the ads going to people who aren't going to click them.

People greatly overestimate their ability to completely ignore ads, and to make purchasing decisions free from influence.

Sure, I believe that I am pretty much completely unaffected ads, but then so does almost everybody else.

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