Screening Ads

[Brian Densmore]

Simple solution is usually correct one.
Download Mozilla 1.0, install said browser, turn off pop-ups.

'nuff said,
Brian

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonathan Hutchins [mailto:hutchins at opus1.com]
> Sent: Monday, June 17, 2002 9:34 AM
> To: 'kclug at kclug.org'
> Subject: Screening Ads
> 
> 
> For various reasons, I don't run a proxy server on my home network.  I
> prefer to have each client connect directly to the target host for web
> pages.
> 
> I've tried blocking banners and pop-up ads by listing them in 
> the DNS I run
> on my net, and pointing it to loopback (there's no web server on that
> machine).  However, the list of domains to block keeps 
> growing faster than I
> maintain the list.  While Microsoft Internet Explorer handles 
> the "Server
> not found" errors reasonably, most of the Linux compatible 
> browsers and
> Netscape in particular on our Mac pop up error dialog boxes 
> that have to be
> cleared to get back to the web page we were trying to view.  
> This is almost
> as annoying as ads to me, and more so to my housemates.
> 
> It seems to me that the firewall is the ideal place to block 
> this unwanted
> traffic, that blocking it at the clients really doesn't save 
> the network
> anything, but without running a proxy server I have run out 
> of ideas to stop
> pop-ups, except for installing client based commercial packages.
> 
> I have considered setting up a web server and pointing the 
> evil domains at
> it.  Ideally, it would return some sort of "nevermind" 
> response that neither
> opens a pop-up window nor triggers an error dialog.
> 
> Does anybody else have ideas about this?  How are you 
> blocking ads, if you
> are?
> 
> (Yes, I know we're discussing theft of services here, what 
> good is a LUG if
> we're not at least a little bit subversive.)
> 
> 
> majordomo at kclug.org
>