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General Category => Forum Lobby => Topic started by: deanwebb on February 22, 2016, 08:26:02 AM

Title: Wireless Carriers to Block Online Ads
Post by: deanwebb on February 22, 2016, 08:26:02 AM
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-02-22/silicon-valley-business-model-jeopardy-wireless-carriers-start-blocking-online-ads

Discuss.

:professorcat:
Title: Re: Wireless Carriers to Block Online Ads
Post by: Reggle on February 23, 2016, 12:06:55 AM
If that's a selling point, why not. I'm actually curious to see how it goes.
Title: Re: Wireless Carriers to Block Online Ads
Post by: deanwebb on February 23, 2016, 09:08:26 AM
My guess is that Google and Facebook start up their ISP offerings in a big way so that they become a carrier that profits from its own ad network. Other carriers may have to look at creating proprietary browsers-search engines-ad networks for their own users.

That, or they cook up a revenue-sharing agreement between advertisers and ISPs.
Title: Re: Wireless Carriers to Block Online Ads
Post by: icecream-guy on February 23, 2016, 11:30:43 AM
So I will need my AppleDevice to communicate to my Apple ISP, to browse the AppleWeb, and get served up AppleAds, that allow me to click and buy things with ApplePay, which is delivered by an AppleDrone.  Of course I'll need to fill my Apple account with Apples.
Title: Re: Wireless Carriers to Block Online Ads
Post by: Otanx on February 23, 2016, 01:18:38 PM
I think if it starts to hurt the bottom line of the ad companies you may see some lawsuits using net neutrality as the reason. They must treat all traffic equally so if they deliver any ads (and you can never block them all) then they are breaking the rules by treating the non-blocked ads differently than the blocked ads. Also arguments from the ad companies that the users want the ads because they went to a page with ads, and their device requested the ad. The counter argument (which I think is valid) is that they are not an ISP, but a managed service provider, and the service being offered is ad-blocking which the users specifically requested by signing up for the service.

It will be interesting.

-Otanx
Title: Re: Wireless Carriers to Block Online Ads
Post by: deanwebb on February 23, 2016, 03:02:03 PM
Say... just had a flippant thought...

If I agree with my ISP that I don't want ads, will it allow me to stream more stuff than before?  :think:
Title: Re: Wireless Carriers to Block Online Ads
Post by: SimonV on February 24, 2016, 09:54:39 AM
Good because these ads consume a whole lot of traffic I'm paying for. Bad because I don't trust corporations to filter what I see and what I don't.

Isn't there an Adblock equivalent on mobile devices?
Title: Re: Wireless Carriers to Block Online Ads
Post by: Reggle on February 24, 2016, 11:51:14 AM
Not without root access, officially. I did succeed at creating an ad-free solution without root for myself :problem?:
Title: Re: Wireless Carriers to Block Online Ads
Post by: SimonV on February 24, 2016, 01:10:10 PM
What, did you VPN back to your place and run it through a proxy?  :mrgreen:
Title: Re: Wireless Carriers to Block Online Ads
Post by: wintermute000 on February 24, 2016, 02:51:57 PM
There's an app forgot the name runs a local proxy basically. It works on wifi, set proxy to localhost
Title: Re: Wireless Carriers to Block Online Ads
Post by: Reggle on February 24, 2016, 04:05:38 PM
Quote from: SimonV on February 24, 2016, 01:10:10 PM
What, did you VPN back to your place and run it through a proxy?  :mrgreen:
Exactly. OpenVPN Connect app.
Now the proxy did limit bandwidth and increased latency, and so did a full tunnel with default route. However, I have a DNS server blocking ad & malware domains at home. Turns out just defining this server as DNS server in VPN did the trick. Full bandwidth and minimal latency.
Title: Re: Wireless Carriers to Block Online Ads
Post by: SimonV on February 24, 2016, 04:07:24 PM
Is that a BIND server you are running? Care to share how to block those domains? :)
Title: Re: Wireless Carriers to Block Online Ads
Post by: Reggle on February 25, 2016, 03:30:52 AM
BIND. I'm thinking about creating a blog post about it. Basically it's a zone per domain which points to NXDOMAIN or 127.0.0.1 and ::1. I have scripts that auto-download a few domain lists, parse them, remove doubles, and reload config.

It does result in BIND9 running with about 20,000 zones. You'll need 1 GB of RAM and I'm running it virtualized on Xeon processors now instead of Atoms, as they increased latency.
Title: Re: Wireless Carriers to Block Online Ads
Post by: wintermute000 on February 25, 2016, 04:18:06 AM
Why not just chain privoxy onto squid and configure appropriately? Using BIND seems to be the wrong instrument for the job
Title: Re: Wireless Carriers to Block Online Ads
Post by: Reggle on February 25, 2016, 07:01:32 AM
Well I'm not sure.

I started this out on a Raspberry and on both the Raspberry and the Intel Atom after it, BIND with a few hundred domains was more lightweight. DNSmasq is even more lightweight but I just love BIND. You're not passing the actual traffic through the server this way.

On the Xeon it may be equal though.
Also, the DNS-based solution works well for devices that can't use a proxy without resorting to transparent proxy stuff.