Is adblock filtering on the "ad" in my URL?

Question

I'm getting reports from users saying two of my sites are broken. It seems like in each case they are running adblock plus. From the reports I'm getting, it seems like Javascript isn't running.

This is a stab in the dark, but (perhaps unfortunately) my servlets are all run from a URL that includes "/ad/" for 'Application Directory', eg.

http://www.example.com/ad/b

Anybody know if this is the sort of sledgehammer that adblock uses to do its thang?

Answer 1

AdBlock uses things called 'filters' to arbitrarily block http requests. Some/all (who knows) of these filters are defined here https://easylist.adblockplus.org/en/

I haven't gone through them in detail, but a quick scan showed a number featuring "/ad/", as do many of my (non advertising) URLs.

Answer 2

Actually it happens with 4shared also if u use adblock and when u go to download page the page becomes static i.e no response on any click

How ad-blockers work

Ad blockers are content filters that rely on predefined filter lists to identify and remove ads. They work by compiling lists of expressions associated with ads and using pattern matching to compare those against outgoing requests made by the user's browser.

Ad blockers may also block tracking scripts, which in turn prevent third-party ad networks from delivering ads to a user's browser by way of the publisher's site. "Before the page is rendered, Adblock Plus modifies it, strips off the request to the ad service or tracking scripts and injects CSS to repair the site so it doesn't look broken," says Till Faida, president of Adblock Plus.

Think of it as surgically removing the ads and then closing up the holes. To the user there's no evidence an ad ever existed.

Because they interrupt communications with third-party ad networks, dedicated tracking blockers such as Disconnect also block ads from those sources. Disconnect does so by examining the host name for any outgoing browser request and blocking requests to hosts associated with ad networks that track users' activity across the Web. But the intent is to block tracking, not ads, says co-CEO Casey Oppenheim, and these tools still let through "first-party" ads produced by the publisher.

What does Adblock do, what did Adblock Plus 0.5/0.6 do? They all used the trivial algoritm:

function getMatchingFilter1(S, F)
  for each filter in F
    if (filter matches S)
      return filter
    end if
  end for

  return null
end function

so your string S is matching filter that is what causing error.