why are ads blocked in Antix?

Abdorhman Ayman · posted: 2016-10-16 10:44

Hi everyone __{{emoticon}}__
why are ads blocked? I didn't block 'em, I didn't use Antix add-blocking app (the one inside the control center) nor an ad-blocking add-on in my browser, the problem is that when I open a page that is classified as an ad by Google, it won't open __{{emoticon}}__

can someone help?

respectfully __{{emoticon}}__

anticapitalista · posted: 2016-10-16 11:25

Use the adblock app in the control centre to remove blocking.

Abdorhman Ayman · posted: 2016-10-16 16:28

anticapitalista wrote:Use the adblock app in the control centre to remove blocking.

I tried, but all of 'em was already unchecked.
can you please confirm this bug? open"
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"https://www.youtube.com/?gl=EG"
linktext was:"https://www.youtube.com/?gl=EG"
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" and see if you can see a huge add in front of you.

respectfully

anticapitalista · posted: 2016-10-16 16:55

No ads since I have them blocked. To unblock you need to to check UNBLOCK.
Or manually go to etc and save hosts.ORIGINAL as hosts

Abdorhman Ayman · posted: 2016-10-17 13:33

anticapitalista wrote:No ads since I have them blocked. To unblock you need to to check UNBLOCK.
Or manually go to etc and save hosts.ORIGINAL as hosts

what I'm trying to say is that AntiX blocks the adds by default, and that needs to be changed because it will block the user of the websites that he/she chose to open by him/her self. As you see in my screen-shot, all of them are unchecked.

Abdorhman Ayman · posted: 2016-10-17 13:37

oh, sorry, I missed your"to unblock you need to check UNBLOCK" part __{{emoticon}}__
still, why is the blocking service activated by default? it shouldn't.

Edit: I can see now that you need it to block those stupid ads in the forum, nice idea __{{emoticon}}__

rokytnji · posted: 2016-10-17 16:35

still, why is the blocking service activated by default? it shouldn't.

Could be, the same reason new motorcycles won't start till the kickstand is up.
__{{emoticon}}__

fatmac · posted: 2016-10-18 08:54

I'd say the simple answer is that most people don't want to see adverts. __{{emoticon}}__

I don't pay my internet provider, for some firm/company to use my bandwidth, to push their adverts on me!

Shay · posted: 2016-10-18 16:46

Plus the unwanted nasties come from the adservers most of the time.

thriftee · posted: 2016-12-11 04:59

I have certain sites that don't work right...

I think the idea of the blocking via hosts is very good. 99% of the time the blocking is doing me a favor, but there is that 1% where it prevents me from trying to research things I'm trying to buy and such.

So, it occurred to me that I should be able to unblock sites easily, and what I'd need for that would be a"whitelist". I didn't know the word till I found a program called host flash, which basically performs a similar function to block-advert, and it uses files called whitelist.txt and whitelist-wild.txt to remove whitelisted sites from the blacklist.

Actually, with some tweaking, it has the code needed pretty much, I guess, that could be added to the antix code, and add whitelist files a edit option to the control center.

Or a neat option would be a script that would run with a parameter of site to whitelist... Imagine a keyboard shortcut to grab the current URL and get the site of it, and whitelist it...

Or I could just go whitelist the sites... The easy temporary fix, I guess

skidoo · posted: 2016-12-11 06:08

> I think the idea of the blocking via hosts is very good.

Fifteen years ago, I would have agreed. Ten years ago (advent of"Web 2 Point oh") I began noticing pitfalls.
In recent years, I now keep my hosts file blocklist very short.
Spin, spin, spin... far too many webpages retry endlessly, attempting to load hostfile-blocked resources.

I'm convinced that blocking now needs to be handled in-browser, with quick access to toggle, edit blocklist, or suspend.. and refresh page.
I've also learned that blocking by exact hostname (ala hosts file) is an exercise in futility.
I threw in the towel when my host file had grown to 248K entries, and still missed quite a few"just invented today" baddie hostnames.
RequestPolicy browser extension (or uBlock Origin, or NoScript) currently suits the task.

I found a program called host flash

Would you post a link?

thriftee · posted: 2016-12-11 06:56

skidoo wrote: RequestPolicy browser extension (or uBlock Origin, or NoScript) currently suits the task.

I'll have to look at those. I'm not sure if I have the retry problems, but I know Firefox is doing better here than Chromium was doing under SlackoPup 5.7.0. My systems were being eaten alive by the browsers, CPU wise, and that was a lot of what forced me to antiX, because I couldn't fix it, and couldn't update, either. I'll have to give these a try.

I found a program called host flash

Would you post a link?[/quote]

I found it on Ubuntu's forum. Its a script somewhat similar to antix's. I haven't actually tried it, but was looking at the script for how the whitelisting was done, which is a feature antix's script doesn't have.

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SamK · posted: 2016-12-11 07:53

thriftee wrote: I think the idea of the blocking via hosts is very good. 99% of the time the blocking is doing me a favor, but there is that 1% where it prevents me from trying to research things I'm trying to buy and such.

So, it occurred to me that I should be able to unblock sites easily...
[...]
The easy temporary fix, I guess

A few posts up in this topic, anticapitalista outlined the way to disable ad-server blocking to allow browsing without impediment. The antiX standard method of blocking/unblocking ad-servers works at a system level i.e. for all browsers. It operates with heavyweight and the most lightweight of browsers, in line with the general antiX philosophy to suit both new and old kit. The following is just some added detail to show how to temporarily suspend ad-server blocking, and reinstate it when wanted i.e. to toggle it, and update the list of blocked ad-servers.

To disable ad-server blocking
Menu-->Control Centre-->Network-->Adblock
At the description window press the OK button
At the window where you choose which services to use, select UNBLOCK and press the OK button

Optional step to verify ad-server blocking is disabled
Menu-->Terminal
Type the command cat /etc/hosts
It will show a few entries similar to this

Code: Select all

127.0.0.1    localhost
127.0.0.1       antix1

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1        localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0        ip6-localnet
ff00::0        ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1        ip6-allnodes
ff02::2        ip6-allrouters

To re-enable ad-server blocking
Menu-->Control Centre-->Network-->Adblock
At the description window choose the OK button
At the window where you choose which services to use, select one or more services and press the OK button

Optional step to verify ad-server blocking is enabled
Menu-->Terminal
Type the command cat /etc/hosts
It will show a many entries similar to this abbreviated one

Code: Select all

127.0.0.1    localhost
127.0.0.1       antix1

# The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
::1        localhost ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
fe00::0        ip6-localnet
ff00::0        ip6-mcastprefix
ff02::1        ip6-allnodes
ff02::2        ip6-allrouters

# antiX-advert-blocker IPs below
127.0.0.1 005.free-counter.co.uk
127.0.0.1 006.free-adult-counters.x-xtra.com
127.0.0.1 006.free-counter.co.uk
127.0.0.1 006.freecounters.co.uk
127.0.0.1 0075-7112-e7eb-f9b9.reporo.net
127.0.0.1 007.free-counter.co.uk
127.0.0.1 007.go2cloud.org
[...]
127.0.0.1 zy.zeroredirect1.com
127.0.0.1 zz.cqcounter.com
127.0.0.1 z.zedo.com
127.0.0.1 z.zeroredirect1.com
127.0.0.1 z.zeroredirect2.com
127.0.0.1 z.zeroredirect.com
127.0.0.1 zzz.clickbank.net
127.0.0.1 zz.zeroredirect1.com
# antiX-advert-blocker IPs above

To update the list of blocked ad-servers
Follow the above steps shown in To re-enable ad-server blocking
This will automatically apply the most upto date unwanted sites to refresh the list of blocked ad-servers. It is probably a good idea to do it from time-to-time.

OFF TOPIC
@forum admins, I tried to use some jpg screenshots to illustrate this post but was prevented from uploading them. Is it a hangover from the recent problems which took the antiX forums off-line?

thriftee · posted: 2016-12-11 14:36

Sam,

Maybe I didn't explain the problem clearly enough.

I want the blocking to be running all the time, but when I try to research for things to buy, the link to the item itself is blocked because it is via an ad service, so the only way to get to it is to type in the URL directly. So I'm not trying to turn it completely off, just to have my own list of override"whitelisted" sites that are allowed even though they are on the blocklist.

So far, I'm just deleting them out manually and maintaining a list of the ones I deleted out, but it would be nicer if that feature were built in somehow. My list only has a few sites on it,

To skidoo's point, maybe I'd be better off if the browser looked up the sites for me and had a"shopping mode" for when ads were desired.

SamK · posted: 2016-12-11 18:10

thriftee wrote:Maybe I didn't explain the problem clearly enough.

You did. I was just indicating that it is actually quite easy to enable, disable, and/or update, the list of blocked sites with very few clicks. Because antiX does not provide ad-server blocking in the way you want, the method was intended to be a way (not necessarily desirable) to let a user work around the condition by toggling the blocking, browsing, then toggling again, which will work with any browser.