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AdTrap removes ads between your modem and router
- eli 14y agoInteresting idea. If it screws up and blocks the wrong thing, I can imagine it would be hell to troubleshoot.
- cracell 14y agoIf it had a simple log of everything is blocked and you were a technical person aware of it being on the network then it would be easy to troubleshoot such situations.
- brennenHN 14y agoWe're all pretty sold on the idea that ads are a bad thing, but would we rather pay for all of the content that is ad-supported?
- mischov 14y agoObviously we would not rather pay. The internet is the bastion of free (beer) information/stuff-that-can-be-transferred-electronically, and I think a great percentage of users prefer said free-ness. All the same, I am more and more convinced that subscription funded, high-quality digital content production is the correct path for the future.
- diminish 14y agoI m confused how this is implemented. First of all only as a proxy it can intervene ssl traffic. Without monthly fees how will they keep updating the ad detection for diverse types of ads from text, image to video.
- desas 14y agoThey'll need to update their detection anyway for devices sold in future. I would assume that the only cost of updating existing devices is the bandwidth cost to download the rules or whatever.
- rshm 14y agoI think, new user would offset for the cost of updating the ad-block rules. I dont think, any could make a perfect adblocker. A good enough blocker would cover 90% of the market anyway.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- adg001 14y agoWhat will prevent modem/router manufacturers from embedding an ad-filtering proxy into their devices (ie, eroding the need for a specialized AdTrap)?
- relix 14y agoBecause like it or not, ads are a vital part of the internet.
- adg001 14y agoI didn't questioned the ad-based internet ecosystem. My question was about the AdTrap competitive advantage, if any. I should have stated it better: assuming, for the sake of discussion, that we want an ad-blocking device, what will prevent modem/router manufacturers from embedding an ad-filtering proxy into their devices, tomorrow? From the OEM perspective, more features means bringing more value. In turn, an ad-blocking router/modem would erode the need for a specialized device a la AdTrap.
- relix 14y agoAh I see, sorry I misinterpreted. I think the routers where you can flash your own linux on, and run it as a server, might already be able to do so. Other than that I think they innovate too slowly to be a significant competitor to AdTrap, for now.
- webjunkie 14y agoNo ads on the Internet? Seriously, how do you think the economy would work without ads? If everyone got one of these, I could tell my boss on monday to close the company.
- jrabone 14y agoGood. It's time for a better business model. Ads suck - they're badly implemented, bloated, bug-ridden, privacy invading security holes at worst, and not much better at best. Every network I have admin for gets a Privoxy HTTP proxy by default and adblock plus/noscript/requestpolicy as strongly advised. My users love it. These guys are right - it's time for change.
- coderdude 14y agoYou say that the creators of this device are right about something that I don't believe they set out to change. If sites stopped displaying ads then no one would buy their product. If the creators become successful in selling this device then they can only continue being successful as long as ads are a problem to a large enough number of people. The ideal world in which their business model can thrive is one where ads are awful and stay that way.
- jakejake 14y agoI feel like most people are OK with a certain amount of ads when they're getting a free product. The problem seems to me that a publisher with one ad makes 1x dollars. Then a marketing genius comes up with a great idea, lets put two ads on the page and make 2x dollars! The 2x dollars maybe lasts for a little while until the advertisers realize they aren't getting 2x the sales so the value of the ad goes down. Marketing genius gets another idea. Hey, how about three ads? Four ads? Pop-up ads..?! Now you just have an overload of cheap, crappy ads that everybody hates and people start figuring out ways to block them. A better solution would be for smaller number of ads with higher cost to the advertiser. They would all be more valuable and get more clicks because we're not so over-saturated with ads. I don't see how it could ever be that way due to human nature, greed, etc. But it would make a lot more sense.
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- PanMan 14y agoInteresting to do this in hardware, as it will work for all devices on your network: also tablets and so on. However, I wonder how many people have separate modems and routers: Most providers (here at least) have modem/wifi AP combo's, which makes it impossible to put this in between. Also, I wonder if some sites will stop working: e.g. I can imagine a video with a pre-roll just never starting, when the pre-roll can't be loaded. And it being hardware, this will be harder to skip.
- samstave 14y agoAt home I have a cable modem attached to my d-link WAP/router. 24/7 I have a verizon MIFI device as a hotspot for work. I have been wanting an in-line wire filter for a long time. While I am not concerned with ads as much, I'd love an inline wire FW that would be configurable.
- joeblau 14y agoIt's not technically being done in "hardware" although it's a separate hardware device. I think the Kickstarter "ad" mentions that they use a version of Linux on there and I'm guessing that their software sit's on top of that.
- buro9 14y agoInteresting. Would love to see how they work on picking adverts out of SSL pages. Would also love to see how they deal with tracking and affiliates stuff in addition to banner adverts. That latter one is an issue for me, I've found some sites to be simply unusable if AdBlock or Ghostery is running in my browser. It's usually tracking code (LinkedIn Inbox is useless to me as are sites that add Omniture to their shop button), and occasionally I go to buy something which is an affiliate link and it gets treated as an advert click and stopped. So it's important not to go too far and break the internet either (though in my view it is the sites that add all this stuff that are breaking it). If this stuff is all in a black box without external configuration... then how do you correct the false positives?
- makira 14y agoYou can block many ads on SSL pages just by denying any DNS resolving to hostnames associated with ads. But that won't catch everything.
- buro9 14y agoThat was the problem with the false negatives. I noted a friend who used this http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/ All looked good, but as it includes more than just banner advertisers (shock sites, tracking sites - privacy issues) he'd have more false positives than I did. Ghostery and the like (browser plugins) are reasonably easy to just disable when you come across an instance that it breaks functionality in a web page. But using a hosts file or DNS block, it was much more opaque about why it was failing as you'd have to remember something you'd forgotten about: You've blocked this thing at the DNS level, it wouldn't resolve. Or more to the point, it would resolve to a local web server that served up zero bytes. That's my worry with a black box on the line... how easy is it to override in those edge cases, and will they play safe by sticking just to known banner adverts and not tracking sites which are sometimes necessary parts of functionality (due to the fact that links are redirected via the tracking site).
- EvanAnderson 14y agoInvariably the device will have security vulnerabilities. The potential man-in-the-middle access this thing will afford an attacker would be a treasure-trove, especially if it has SSL bump-in-the-wire functionality.
- jrabone 14y agoWhy is it any worse than the current state of the browser SSL world? When was the last time anyone went through the built-in CA certificate list and deleted all the ones from countries with dubious human rights records, or companies with less-than-stellar security history?
- dsr_ 14y agoSo this is a bridge-mode transparent HTTP proxy with Privoxy running on it? [Or the equivalent thereof?] Or does it do an SSL MITM attack on all your traffic? The former is interesting mostly because it doesn't require end-user configuration, so to a naive user it really is plug-it-in-and-works. The latter is, as several have now pointed out, horrendously awful. What nobody seems to have mentioned yet, though, is that you can turn the first into the second with a code update.
- nivla 14y agoI think all it does is to block/poison ad-based domain from resolving to their respective IPs. Very low overhead and gives you the same result. You can also achieve the same thing if you have a dd-wrt installed router: http://www.howtogeek.com/51477/how-to-remove-advertisements-with-pixelserv-on-dd-wrt/ http://www.howtogeek.com/51477/how-to-remove-advertisements-...
- kylec 14y agoThis is actually a really interesting product, but there are very few details. My big concern is one of trust - if I'm going to literally route all my network traffic through this device, how can I trust that it's not doing something nefarious? Also, what kind of performance does this device offer? Given that it's inspecting every connection, this might put a limit on the throughput it can provide and/or add additional latency. Also, how transparent is it to the network? Does it do its own version of NAT or does it just passively inspect the traffic that passes through?
- Karunamon 14y ago>If I'm going to literally route all my network traffic through this device, how can I trust that it's not doing something nefarious? How do you know that your modem, router, and ISP aren't doing something nefarious? Somehow I doubt a product which explicitly does Bad Things© to your datastream will sell well.
- vegardx 14y agoBecause they already have my data, no way that they would go through the hoops of installing a device at my home to do it. But I'm not saying that it's a ridicules idea to be worried about. It would be too damn easy to detect.
- spindritf 14y ago> How do you know that your modem, router, and ISP aren't doing something nefarious? I run Linux on my router and encrypt traffic of any value beyond it. This being HN, it's probably not a particularly unusual setup. Which brings me to the most important question about that device, why not move its functionality to the router? Why yet another box?
- Karunamon 14y agoI'd guess because selling yet another router would put them into stiff competition with only a single feature to differentiate them. Seems like the motto here is do one thing very well.
- amalag 14y agoI am willing to see ads in return for the free services I get. I get free TV shows without cable and free movies on Youtube. Really, what business model does this kickstarter project advocate?
- derleth 14y ago> what business model does this kickstarter project advocate? One where ads are not so annoying people go to the trouble of buying this and setting it up. Malware ads, video ads, ads deliberately designed to fool people into thinking they have a virus and need to CLICK NOW! are all reasons why people would be considering going to the immense trouble of getting this little piece of gear and making it work for them.
- sparkplug 14y ago"Your failed business model is not my problem." - Meg Hourihan, co-founder of Blogger
- halayli 14y agoI wonder what approach they'll take to advertise this product to the public.
- ig1 14y agoCould you just do this with a raspberry pi and at a much cheaper cost ?