AB-Solution - The Ad Blocking Solution

[thelonelycoder]

Firefox on QubesOS; fedora-20 X64 vm

(yes, old OS, but not usually problematic)

(NoScript and Ublock Origin are installed, but I deactivated each.)

Never heard of that. You must see a lot of wrongly formatted webpages if my website is not rendered as it should.
"A reasonably secure operating system"

 

[cybrnook]

Thank you the lonelycoder and cybrnook for the quick replies.

cybrnook, thanks for the copy-able posting (I couldn't copy it from the web page) of the correct command which appears farther down the page.


TU

You are very welcome!

 

[Tastannin]

How did you add the unmentionable hosts files?
The custom blocking file updates the same way as the preset ones, once per week.

Your comment got me looking some more and I figured it out. Thanks!

 

[skeal]

The creator of privacy filter and malware filter says that in order for his scripts to communicate and get updates needs ab-solution to pause it's protection. I guess he is saying ab-solution blocks this vital communication. This all sounds nuts to me. Doesn't make sense. Why would the sites his programs communicate with be blocked by ab-solution? If it's true how would you temporarily shut down ab-solution?

 

[thelonelycoder]

The creator of privacy filter and malware filter says that in order for his scripts to communicate and get updates needs ab-solution to pause it's protection. I guess he is saying ab-solution blocks this vital communication. This all sounds nuts to me. Doesn't make sense. Why would the sites his programs communicate with be blocked by ab-solution? If it's true how would you temporarily shut down ab-solution?

Let me find out first what the exact problem is with this, I'll get back to you as soon I have a working solution.
Apparently, you have to set adblocking (a) to off while updating the filter list.

 

[skeal]

Let me find out first what the exact problem is with this, I'll get back to you as soon I have a working solution.
Apparently, you have to set adblocking (a) to off while updating the filter list.

Thanks!

 

[thelonelycoder]

Thanks!

OK, sorted it out with @swetoast. I'm going to add checks into the update-hosts.add so that certain domains are whitelisted if Privacy Filter is installed and running.
Will do that as soon as time permits and release an update of that file.

In the meantime, you could simply copy all entries in privacy-filter.list into the whitelist.txt, run el in AB and process the whitelist.
Separate these entries with a comment, so you can remove them when the update is out.

 

[skeal]

OK, sorted it out with @swetoast. I'm going to add checks into the update-hosts.add so that certain domains are whitelisted if Privacy Filter is installed and running.
Will do that as soon as time permits and release an update of that file.

In the meantime, you could simply copy all entries in privacy-filter.list into the whitelist.txt, run el in AB and process the whitelist.
Separate these entries with a comment, so you can remove them when the update is out.

Thank you! You may want to include malware-filter as well in your update he claims there is interference from ab-solution in that script as well. Thank you for considering this!

 

[swetoast]

@skeal no malware-filter is not impacted, just privacy-filter.

 

[skeal]

@skeal no malware-filter is not impacted, just privacy-filter.

Cool thank you for the clarification!

 

[thelonelycoder]

Hmmm - my (email) password contains a " - that seems to make AD Solution flip out somewhat....?

For technical reasons, passwords containing a " character will not work. This is almost impossible to implement the way I built the underlying email functions.
A warning is given before entering the password in a future update.

 

[Tastannin]

How did you add the unmentionable hosts files?
The custom blocking file updates the same way as the preset ones, once per week.

Thanks - I did a bit more reading and realized how I was supposed to set up the custom blocking file correctly. Now all is good.

I do have another question. I've turned on pixelserv-tls but I keep getting pop-ups in my Safari browser window saying "Safari can't verify the identity of the website" and it's asking me to either Cancel or Continue. What is the appropriate action to take here? If I choose Cancel, then the pop-up comes back. If I choose Continue - will that allow me to be tracked by ads or ??

Thanks!

 

[Wutikorn]

Thanks - I did a bit more reading and realized how I was supposed to set up the custom blocking file correctly. Now all is good.
I do have another question. I've turned on pixelserv-tls but I keep getting pop-ups in my Safari browser window saying "Safari can't verify the identity of the website" and it's asking me to either Cancel or Continue. What is the appropriate action to take here? If I choose Cancel, then the pop-up comes back. If I choose Continue - will that allow me to be tracked by ads or ??
View attachment 9107

I am not using pixelserv-tls, but I know basic stuff, and this is how I think it work. That pop-up means that the certificate your PC gets is not certificate that s.amazon-adsystem.com uses, which is not surprising since pixelserv-tls read packets from that website, then use it own certificate to encrypt data and send to your PC. So what your PC get here is certificate of pixelserv not the website and Safari is saying that certificate does not match. This is not really a problem since the connection should still be almost as secure, but your router, not someone else, is reading your data before your PC gets them.

But should be a way to fix this pop-up by accepting self-signed certificate on your PC, which means that PC will know that the router certificate is safe(according to your setting), and it will not show pop-up. There should be other posts in this forum telling you how-to.

On the other hand, you can keep clicking continue, which is a little annoying.

 

[Correlor]

Hello all,

I was fooling around with the new version of pixelserv-tls (kj), when I discovered that the Edge browser does not to connect to pixelserv-tls. It does get the local address of pixelserv-tls so ab-solution is working, but Edge will not connect (https) with pixelserv-tls on this local address. Other browsers don't have this problem. Searching the internet I found mentions and possible solutions. Only one worked. When I switched off the visibility of my PC to my local network (other computers can not see my PC) than Edge can connect to pixelserv-tls over https. Can you confirm this behaviour of Edge and perhaps know a solution?

Thanks

 

[thelonelycoder]

AB-Solution 3.8.1 is now available!

Changelog v3.8.1 (the UI will still show 3.8):
pixelserv-tls.add: Added option to purge auto-generated pixelserv-tls certificates. This is necessary with the coming update of pixelserv version Kj.

pixelserv-tls.add and main script: Now correctly reports error when pixelserv-tls fails to start.

functions.add: Colors in f option 1 for blocked domains, Custom hosts list added to sf file viewer if present.

update-hosts.add: Removes domains used in Privacy-Filter and Malware-Filter scripts by @swetoast from the blocking file

Note for users of @swetoast's Privacy-Filter and/or Malware-Filter:
After the update, run u once for the domains to be removed in the blocking file, the next update of the filter lists will then correctly report the filtered IP's.
If you do not run u manually, the weekly scheduled blocking file update will do this automatically.
The removal of Malware-Filter domains is more of a precaution as StevenBlack's hosts file may block legitimate domains.

log-stats.add and rotate-logs.add remain at version number 3.8 with this update.

Use cu to update to this latest version.

 

[Tastannin]

I am not using pixelserv-tls, but I know basic stuff, and this is how I think it work. That pop-up means that the certificate your PC gets is not certificate that s.amazon-adsystem.com uses, which is not surprising since pixelserv-tls read packets from that website, then use it own certificate to encrypt data and send to your PC. So what your PC get here is certificate of pixelserv not the website and Safari is saying that certificate does not match. This is not really a problem since the connection should still be almost as secure, but your router, not someone else, is reading your data before your PC gets them.

But should be a way to fix this pop-up by accepting self-signed certificate on your PC, which means that PC will know that the router certificate is safe(according to your setting), and it will not show pop-up. There should be other posts in this forum telling you how-to.

On the other hand, you can keep clicking continue, which is a little annoying.

@Wutikorn - appreciate the clarification. I dug a little further into the pop-up and I can see where the certificate says it was issued by Pixelserv. Now I feel better about accepting the certificates. Just wanted to be sure I do the right thing.

 

[thelonelycoder]

Hello all,

I was fooling around with the new version of pixelserv-tls (kj), when I discovered that the Edge browser does not to connect to pixelserv-tls. It does get the local address of pixelserv-tls so ab-solution is working, but Edge will not connect (https) with pixelserv-tls on this local address. Other browsers don't have this problem. Searching the internet I found mentions and possible solutions. Only one worked. When I switched off the visibility of my PC to my local network (other computers can not see my PC) than Edge can connect to pixelserv-tls over https. Can you confirm this behaviour of Edge and perhaps know a solution?

Thanks

I have yet to test Kj, did you purge the old certificates? The latest AB update has now an option in ps to purge them all.

 

[Correlor]

I have yet to test Kj, did you purge the old certificates? The latest AB update has now an option in ps to purge them all.

Sorry, I forgot to say it has nothing to do with ab-solution or pixelserv-tls. I just want to know if there are other people who have the same problem with Edge. Why else should you use pixelserv-tls if Edge cannot use it. You would have adblocking but no pixelserv functionality. I personally went over to Chrome.

 

[thelonelycoder]

Sorry, I forgot to say it has nothing to do with ab-solution or pixelserv-tls. I just want to know if there are other people who have the same problem with Edge. Why else should you use pixelserv-tls if Edge cannot use it. You would have adblocking but no pixelserv functionality. I personally went over to Chrome.

Many would say using an alternate browser than Edge is a wise decision...

 

[HardCat]

Just tried to run "cu" and got this.

getting version info from ab-solution.info...


hmm...
looks like ab-solution.info is down


Please notify @thelonelycoder immediately!
Thanks