DNSBL breaking Google.com shopping tab...
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I eneabled pfBlockerNG DNSBL and loaded several lists. It seems to be working great; too great. I'd like for the Shopping Tab in Google to still work, or alternatively, I'd like the Google Shopping tab and shopping ads to just not appear at all. When I go to that tab on google.com the thumbnails of the products show up, but when I click on one, the fact that it routes through googleadservices for them to get their click credit causes the firewall to block it. Is there any way to continue to block unwanted googleadservices ads but keep the Shopping tab on google.com working? If not, is there something else I can add to cause the Google Shopping results to go away entirely? I'm ok with either, but I don't like this middle state where it's there but broken. Thanks!
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Use the whitelist option in the pfblockerNG to override the feeds to allow it.
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OK, so how do I override that particular feed while preventing the rest of googleadservices from working elsewhere? (P.S. I'm an amateur at this).
As a test, I tried adding googleadservices.com to the whitelist and refreshing but it didn't seem to work. Not sure if I typed it in the right place.
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- pfblockerng
- dnsbl
- dnsbl whitelist
Adding a domain there will allow you to access it, irrespective on which feed has it flagged to be blocked.
Once you have made the changes, need to do 3 things for it to take effect:
- run the pfblockerng update routine (top menu under pfblockerng)
- restart your browser
- clear the dns cache on your computer with the command >ipconfig /flushdns
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Click on the everywhere to get detailed information about pfBlockerNG
googleadservices.com might have CNAME associated with it.
When you use the Reports/Alerts tab to Whitelist a Domain, pfBlockerNG will dig CNAMEs as well.
Allways run a Force Reload DNSBL when you change the DNSBL Whitelist.
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Thanks for your help so far! It was the dnsflush I didn't know I needed to do. That did the trick. With that said, I'm not sure the list of things I had to whitelist to mostly get shopping working again are worth it. Apparently Google partners with other places as well. So far, I had to whitelist the following:
googleadservices . com
www . googleadservices . com
clickserve . dartsearch . netIf I really want it to work perfectly, I also would have to whitelist ad . doubleclick . net which I don't think is a smart thing to do. That's one of the biggest ad servers out there.
If I want to pursue this further, is there a way to set this up to allow me to click on a link outbound while still blocking ads being presented to me on other sites?
I may be giving up too much ad blocking just to get Google Shopping working again. I'm not sure yet. Only after browsing a few web sites to see what ads, if any are being presented again, will I know the outcome of whitelisting these I suppose.
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@RonpfS You just touched on something I'm not quite figuring out how to do. I'm on pfBlockerNG-devel, which apparently doesn't have the Alerts tab anymore, so I'm not sure how to what used to be done via Alerts. I was reading out the CNAME issue but haven't figured out how -devel version handles that.
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@HSTS It's under the Reports tab
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@RonpfS Found it. Thank you. Still haven't found the specific alert I'm looking for, but I at least know where to dig. Note that I haven't been looking all this time. I got side tracked doing something else. Thanks again for your help.
