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Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

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Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#121

Post by golergka »

tensor wrote: post #56
golergka wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your website is monetized through ads, why would you want these people to visit it in the first place?

They will share your website with others, post links to it on social media, etc. Websites are all about driving traffic to it. Also, "these people" are also often willing to pay for good content if it's priced right. Substack is a good example of this, even if some of the prices are still too high.

> Also, "these people" are also often willing to pay for good content if it's priced right.

Are you sure? One of the main sites people use adblocking is Youtube — instead of just paying for Youtube premium.

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#122

Post by ndriscoll »

flohofwoe wrote: post #79
helpmefindpurp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you do not like the ads, just stop visiting sites that show ads...

If the ads would be self-hosted and properly curated by the hosting site I wouldn't have a problem with them (just as I don't have much of a problem with print or tv ads). The specific problem with web ads is that most of the web made a deal with the devil: 3rd-party ad-networks which are directly injecting who-knows-what into webpages. Those ads are not just cheap click-bait-trash, but also potential malware vectors…

The US federal government also officially recommends using an ad blocker to protect oneself from e.g. ransomware and fraud, and has issued a warning that online ads are being used for those things:

https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2022/PSA221221

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#123

Post by mechazawa »

bawolff wrote: post #7
hedora wrote: post #4

Sounds like it might make sense to drop this early hints feature (whatever it is). I wonder how much longer it will be before the next major escalation happens with ad blockers. I can imagine mainstream browsers that fetch unmodified pages and click ads in the background (do subvert pay per click ad business models and make it harder to compute targeting metrics), but then display an ad/tracking-free version in a sep…

Even without early hints, i assume you could do the same thing with the link http header. Or if you really dont care about performance, just loading the start (e.g. ) of the document and wait a little bit to see which subresources are loaded.

Yep that also works, I've made a proof of concept for that ages ago https://github.com/Mechazawa/pixelAntiAdblock/blob/master/ap...

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#124

Post by josephcsible »

thenewnewguy wrote: post #8

Probably too unreliable to use in real life - for example, I suspect many crappy corporate proxies will block HTTP 103 responses as some unknown danger.

Unfortunately, it can be used opportunistically, as the readme says:

> Browsers that do not fully support early hints can be easily detected by adding a harmless dummy resource to preload that will not be blocked by adblockers.

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#125

Post by crtasm »

ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #100
crtasm wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't really work out for anyone running on battery.

If done right, this might actually be more energy efficient than having to download and render all those unoptimized ads.

I'd be interested to see a calculation on how much value could be extracted from the same amount of CPU cycles mining crypto - my gut feeling is it would be orders of magnitude smaller.

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#126

Post by Symbiote »

Adverblessly wrote: post #108
bawolff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While i know its evil, i always wished widevine was an option for creating captchas. Most captcha solutions are defeated by services like 2captcha.net and generally aren't the most privacy respecting.

I'd prefer to see proof-of-work based captchas. I'd much rather give up 10 minutes of CPU time for a token that can be revoked as soon as I actually use it for evil than give up all of my privacy (and two minutes of my personal time) for the privilege of using your annoying website.

That is what those Cloudflare "checking your connection before proceeding" page is doing.

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#127

Post by xk_id »

jerf wrote: post #83
kedean wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Select every tile with motorcycles", shows an image of a single motorcycle parked on the street. Does the sliver of a tire that shows up in the bottom right tile count, or not? This is never clear, and I end up usually getting it wrong until they show me one that's unambiguous.

"This is never clear, and I end up usually getting it wrong until they show me one that's unambiguous." While those CAPTCHAs present a surface narrative of you having to get the problem correct, that's not how they really work. After all, it's not like they are creating those problems by hand. They're pushing the images through computers. You don't even know that what the CAPTCHA server considers correct is even clos…

a tutorial on how to be human on internet

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#128

Post by nottorp »

nullfield wrote: post #118
nottorp wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Price thing: no one can afford to pay "a latte per month" for every site they visit. Trust thing: the site is likely to still spy on you even if you're a paid subscriber. Even if they drop ads they'll send your data to google or some other analytics provider, at the least. They'll "accidentaly reset" your email preferences. Plus other shenanigans *. Infrequency thing: I won't subscribe to $SOME_SITE just because it's…

I managed to subscribe at a really good annual rate vs. list through some online aggregator, where they pre-warn me of renewal and rate changes to let me cancel if I want. I don’t remember what it was without searching my email, so not shilling for them in any way, but there are methods. That said, yeah-no one can reasonably afford the constant “I just want to read this one linked article twice a year on your local c…

> Maybe with news the best way would be some kind of micro transaction, but all attempts so far have failed…

It's hard. I wouldn't pay a subscription to a micro transaction middle man, for example. Unless it would work like a music service, i.e. have everything available for one price, and not like a video service with their islands and attempts to differentiate.

But if they had everything, you'd end up with a gatekeeper that decides who can make money and who can't, and that ends up as censorship. If such a service ever comes up, i want to be able to pay for any site with it, including porn, right wing propaganda and left wing propaganda if i so choose. And that ain't going to happen.

Now suppose there would be competing services where you could pay 5 cents for an article read, and they'd bill you when you reach $10 or something for the transaction fees to make sense. That's okay, you pay per read, you can have accounts with several middle men because you pay per use.

But what do you pay for? One read? What if something comes up and you can't finish? Will you be able to save it for later reading or will that cost extra?

Perpetual access? With per-article access control that's going to be a major database after a while. Hard problem technically.

And I've only begun to think about it...

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#129

Post by YetAnotherNick »

wrigglingworm wrote: post #87

I wouldn't even mind ads if most sites weren't malicious with how they serve them. Do not make a new window pop up, do not try to download anything to my computer without my explicit instruction, do not make me click an x to view the content, do not interrupt the content to serve an ad. Why can't they just have a nice little ad on the left and/or right side of the page that doesn't interrupt my intake of their conten…

The entire point of ad is to make you notice. As you said you "don't mind", this is not something ads would want. It's a raising bar as people are starting to learn to ignore ads more and more subconsiously.

Re: Show HN: Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses

#130

Post by YetAnotherNick »

Adverblessly wrote: post #108
bawolff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While i know its evil, i always wished widevine was an option for creating captchas. Most captcha solutions are defeated by services like 2captcha.net and generally aren't the most privacy respecting.

I'd prefer to see proof-of-work based captchas. I'd much rather give up 10 minutes of CPU time for a token that can be revoked as soon as I actually use it for evil than give up all of my privacy (and two minutes of my personal time) for the privilege of using your annoying website.

Spammers would actually prefer it I think. I think for each captcha solved, spammer are ready to pay more than real users(be it electricity or real money). They were already paying real humans before AI became good enough for solving captcha.
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