• ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    22 hours ago

    This is a new kind of Adblock detection that is being deployed on many blogs, some forums, and other websites and it’s the next generation. AdGuard or uBlock won’t save you because the way it works is outside the scope of those plugins.

    There’s essentially JS that happens before the page render that checks for resolution with fingerprinting servers. If this does not occur you get the error message about html-load.com or content-loader.com or whatever that looks like malware intercepting the page.

    If the page implements the JS poorly (eg the page renders before the checks come back) it’s easily defeated with ublock by just blocking element and selecting the overlay. Though the page usually isn’t fully rendered it’s enough to read the content. Reader mode can often work in this scenario too. But on more competent blogs with actual tech support (like seriouseats.com, fuck you kenji, like you don’t have enough money), it’s implemented more competently and the page won’t render at all prior to the checks coming back.

    As a result a solution is to lie. It’s cumbersome but if you run adguard dns (or maybe pihole, if that can also do dns rewrites, not sure), you can rewrite the offending servers checked for fingerprinting you like:

    api64.ipify.org
    cdn.cookielaw.org
    id5-sync.com
    cdn.id5-sync.com
    dotdash-meredith.solutions.cdn.optable.co
    static.cloudflareinsights.com
    html-load.com
    content-loader.com

    To a null route on your network for all subdomains. Somewhere run a docker and rewrite them to resolve to that docker, run nginx on that docker and basically just have it return 204 to all requests you funnel to it.

    Now those sites run the JS, there is dns resolution, tls handshake, fetch and response, but no fingerprint or analytics. It’s not perfect, the error still occurs 1:5 tries, but closing tab and retrying almost always has the page render fine without issue.

    Just keep in mind that some of these will break other sites (specifically cookielaw.org and lots of shitty shopping sites) especially if you do this lazily and just route to nothing instead of something that can return 204.

    Fuck all advertisers, never turn Adblock off, steal all content, defeat any antiadblock measure, destroy the ad industry because they ruined the world