Is There An Effective Way To Kill Banner Ads?

2MuchC0ffeeMan asks: "Is there a way, in Windows or Linux, to kill ads? I saw a browser the other day for the Mac, and it could recognize and NOT load banner ads. Are there programs out there that take this a step further, and reject cookies from whoever is sending the ad? The thing is, I hate how the internet is becoming a huge database of user information. Surveys, user history, usernames, and preferences are becoming the buisness of tomorrow. With people like amazon.com now selling user info, I would like to take a stand against this kind of practice." By now, most readers have heard about Junkbuster, and a few of you may know about Guidescope but many new Internet users may not, and there are probably other cookie/ad blocking sites out there that others might find useful. What are the possibilities that future browsers may incorporate ad blocking technuqies and what is the best way (aside from a "cookie-domain kill file" to detect a banner ad?

Comments

One way...

[Quietust]

...that I find rather useful is to effectively blacklist the adbar sites. One way to do this (on your own system) is to add them to your hosts file (either c:\windows\hosts or /etc/hosts) to resolve to something like 255.255.255.255 or 0.0.0.0 (sample line: "255.255.255.255 ad.doubleclick.net"); most TCP/IP stacks (read: Winsock) will immediately error and refuse to connect to such IPs. If that doesn't work, put 127.0.0.1 instead and run a tiny program on port 80 to give a null response on all connect attempts (or just immediately disconnect).

A good list of adbar sites to blacklist:

ads.1for1.com
connect.247media.ads.link4ads.com
ads.admonitor.net
ads.amazingmedia.com
view.avenuea.com
image.avea.a7.avenuea.com
www.banerz.com
www.burstnet.com
www.commission-junction.com
ad.doubleclick.net
netgrav.ea.com
adimg.egroups.com
js-adex3.flycast.com
ad-adex3.flycast.com
jeeves.flycast.com
ads.focalink.com
ads01.focalink.com
ads02.focalink.com

...

ads34.focalink.com
ads35.focalink.com
w25.hitbox.com
www.hostreview.com
adforce.imgis.com
ad.linksynergy.com
ads.msn.com
ads.mysimon.com
server3.pennyweb.com
adserver.ugo.com
oz.valueclick.com
www.virtuads.com
a32.g.a.yimg.com
a372.g.a.yimg.com
us.a1.yimg.com

It's also a good idea to add in some of the 'nasty' sites the trolls post on /. (like goatse.cx), so if you accidentally click on such a link, you'll just get an error message instead of actually seeing the page.

-- Sig (120 chars) --
Your friendly neighborhood mIRC scripter.

Useful links

[Hooha Man]

[http://www.idcide.com] - an add-on for IE (not 5.5, yet) which informs you if the site you are visiting uses a tracking network. Also prevents cookies leaving your computer. Warning: this program sometimes causes IE to crash when I close the IE window. Nothing else crashes, and it's never crashed when actually in use. There should be a version for IE 5.5 and Netscape soon.

[http://grc.com] Steve Gibson's pages. Lots of cool stuff, including information on how ad companies are abusing the privacy of net users.

[http://lavasoft.de] Look for 'Ad-Aware' - IMO the best spyware remover (see Steve Gibson's pages for a description).

[http://homestead.deja.com/user.raymarron/] Hostess, a useful Windows app to aid adding entries to the hosts file.

[http://accs-net.com/hosts/] Info on using the hosts file. Has an example hosts file.

[http://accs-net.com/smallfish/] Excellent privacy site, links and info.


I'd post my hosts file but it currently has 7225 entries.

<O O&gt
( \/ )
X X

Long term solution:

[rjamestaylor]

Don't click them.

They'll die on their own (as they are beginning to do, if you've noticed that dot-commers with business models based on page view ad sales...are in the outs investment-wise).

Another way: don't keep silent when your company uses them on its web sites -- complain loudly...

Anybody else think this is a strange topic for Slash-banner-ad-revenue-model-Dot?

hmmm...Well, it hasn't made front page...

Now hiring experienced client- & server-side developers

A neat trick for those behind proxies.

[brad.hill]

You can create an autoconfig file in JavaScript and tell your browser to bypass the proxy for ad sites, thus using your firewall for an ad blocker. The only problem is that you have to load the JavaScript code ad sites want to send you. Browsers degrade a page gracefully if they can't find an image, but they usually fail hard if they can't find a bit of JavaScript code.

Here's an example file. Save it as any filename you like, and set it as the location of your "Automatic Proxy Configuration" in your browser of choice.

function FindProxyForURL(url, host) {
//If only a hostname, go directly.
if (isPlainHostName(host)) {
return "DIRECT";
}

// Remove a few ads
if (
(
url.indexOf("/RealMedia/") > 0
|| url.indexOf("ads.x10.com") > 0
|| url.indexOf("ads3.zdnet.com") > 0
|| url.indexOf("/ads/") > 0
|| url.indexOf("/Ads/") > 0
|| url.indexOf("/adverts/") > 0
|| url.indexOf("/adserver/") > 0
|| ( dnsDomainIs( host,"doubleclick.net") && url.indexOf("/adj/") == -1)
|| dnsDomainIs( host,"focalink.com")
|| dnsDomainIs( host,"adbureau.net")
|| dnsDomainIs( host,"ads.imgis.com")
|| dnsDomainIs( host,"ad.preferences.com")
|| dnsDomainIs( host,"view.avenuea.com")
)
&& url.indexOf(".js") == -1
&& url.indexOf("jx.ads") == -1
&& url.indexOf("js.ng") == -1
&& url.indexOf("jsad") == -1
&& url.indexOf("jscript") == -1
&& url.indexOf("addyn") == -1
&& url.indexOf("type=script") == -1
)
{
return "DIRECT";
}
else
{
return "PROXY /*Your proxy addr and port here*/";
}
}