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Show HN: Detect Adblock

detectadblock.com

6 pointsamorgan11 comments

It's a valiant effort, but there's really no way they'll win this battle. The client simply has too much control.

I was toying with writing a chrome extension for sites/videos that behave differently when adblock is running. It shouldn't be too hard to make the site believe that the ad content is running, when it's not actually running.

Not a perfect approach, but if bandwidth / compute / memory is not an issue, it could be a novel way to respond to more sophisticated ad block detect mechanisms that come out.

The purpose of our method is to detect the usage of ad blockers for informational purposes. For example, if you have a site that displays ads you'd probably like to know how many of your visitors are blocking them.

It's a good thing I pay attention to detail.

If I add a rule to allow the ads.js to be loaded for only that domain (an possibility adblockanalytics.com) it completely defeats the detection.

In my experience once you start blocking any content the ad blocking community will make a change to the EasyList to have that exclusion included.

You could add a rule to allow ads.js for each site's domain that's using the method as we've described, but a site could easily dynamically cycle through the thousands of file name combinations contained within EasyList.

Then simply allow all scripts on the domain to load, only blocking 3rd party scripts.

It is a cat and mouse game.

I couldn't agree more and it'll probably remain that way for awhile longer.

3rd party scripts can be included via a CNAME record at the root domain level.

It's not about the ads, why don't you put this much effort into not using "free" online tools and quality checking the content your customers recieve.

You're right - it's about sites that display advertising gaining a better understanding of how their revenue is affected by ad blockers. Once they know that they can have an informed discussion on what, if any, changes are needed.

I'm not sure what tools and content you're referring to though. Can you send me an email with details? https://www.adblockanalytics.com/contact/

I'm the creator of Detect Adblock and will be around if anyone has any feedback or wants to discuss anything related to ad blocking.

Commented above, it's a cool project, but ultimately I wouldn't recommend spending too much time trying to fight a war against browser clients.

Unless sites/applications are running their own thick clients, there is ultimately no way that they'll ever be able to ensure ad content is displayed.

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