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AdHole: A simple, transparent ad and tracker blocker in Go

14 points by Artemis2 12y ago

scrollaway 12y ago
This is interesting. I wonder what the long-term efficiency of blocking trackers/ads by DNS is. There will be a point where these things could run on the same networks as other things which you wont necessarily want to block. What if google began serving its ads from google.com for example? What are HN's thoughts on this? I'm tempted to run an ad blackhole service on my router or dnscrypt server; it's a line I haven't investigated yet as adblock + privacy badger do the job just fine on Chrome.
andreasvc 12y ago
It's simpler to just use a hosts file for blocking ad domains. A HTTP server serving replacement ads is optional. An adblocking proxy only becomes necessary once you start rewriting the contents of pages. I used to use AdBlock but nowadays I only use a hosts file (one from http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/ ) and I haven't noticed any ads that don't get blocked, while memory usage is lower and performance higher.
- derefr 12y ago
  The main thing ABP does for me is to filter out things that match the "signature" of an ad (image tags with size matching standard ad-sales sizes) even when they're hosted on the same domain as the origin.
drbig 12y ago
I didn't realize this made to Hacker News... As for the current comments: * Using hosts file is a local, per machine solution. Similarly, AdBlock is a per user per browser solution. None of which may be available on your phone. And AdHole is not meant to be a replacement for anything - it's another tool. * I have a very restrictive list, including some CDNs known to host tracking software. Surprisingly it breaks none of the websites I use regularly. For the odd cases I implemented the /debug/toggle method. At this low-level there will always be a trade-off between blocking and breaking. I also use AdBlock on all the 'big computers', but my block list is still more restrictive. And the biggest value is that I get ad and tracking blocking on all my Android gear without doing any additional work.

14 points by Artemis2 12y ago

This is interesting. I wonder what the long-term efficiency of blocking trackers/ads by DNS is. There will be a point where these things could run on the same networks as other things which you wont necessarily want to block. What if google began serving its ads from google.com for example? What are HN's thoughts on this? I'm tempted to run an ad blackhole service on my router or dnscrypt server; it's a line I haven't investigated yet as adblock + privacy badger do the job just fine on Chrome.

andreasvc 12y ago

It's simpler to just use a hosts file for blocking ad domains. A HTTP server serving replacement ads is optional. An adblocking proxy only becomes necessary once you start rewriting the contents of pages. I used to use AdBlock but nowadays I only use a hosts file (one from http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/ http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/ ) and I haven't noticed any ads that don't get blocked, while memory usage is lower and performance higher.

derefr 12y ago
The main thing ABP does for me is to filter out things that match the "signature" of an ad (image tags with size matching standard ad-sales sizes) even when they're hosted on the same domain as the origin.

drbig 12y ago

I didn't realize this made to Hacker News... As for the current comments: * Using hosts file is a local, per machine solution. Similarly, AdBlock is a per user per browser solution. None of which may be available on your phone. And AdHole is not meant to be a replacement for anything - it's another tool. * I have a very restrictive list, including some CDNs known to host tracking software. Surprisingly it breaks none of the websites I use regularly. For the odd cases I implemented the /debug/toggle method. At this low-level there will always be a trade-off between blocking and breaking. I also use AdBlock on all the 'big computers', but my block list is still more restrictive. And the biggest value is that I get ad and tracking blocking on all my Android gear without doing any additional work.