PrivDog & AdBlock

Then those websites might be the only ones you visit that have ads that need replacing. (Third-party ads, not locally hosted ads…)

I disagree, for example: http://www.sweclockers.com/ has third-party ads that are removed by PrivDog however they are not replaced by ads from AdTrustMedia. And the third-party ads are from for example adtech.de so they aren’t local.

This website Pixie Trix Comix - Eerie Cuties - has ads from third-party which are replaced and shows AdTrustMedia ads.

So some sites that PrivDog removes ads on do not show AdTrustMedia ads while some other sites do show AdTrustMedia ads when PrivDog is active.

I said might. I don’t know the inner workings of PrivDog…

Edit: Although if it isn’t replacing ads it has blocked, I don’t think it’s working correctly. :-\

That may be a bug.

Please report it as such in the PrivDog section of the forum and see what they have to say about it.

Will do, though I think it’s expected behavior but I might be wrong.

Edit: Bug report if anyone is interested: https://forums.comodo.com/bug-reports-privdog/some-sites-do-not-show-ads-from-adtrustmedia-after-privdog-removes-the-ads-t96305.0.html

All the ads you see must come from adtrustmedia… If there are ads that are not being caught, pls report them we will add detection.

We could have put a very harsh block all algorithm using regular expression (bit like ABP), but that would cause problems with some legitimate sites operations because its a blind operation…
we will be introducing similar but more friendly architecture to block more ads. But in the mean time please report us all the ads that you think we are missing.
thanks

I believe Sanya is saying that there are ads that are being blocked that aren’t being replaced by the “safe” ads.

Thank you. I reset it and it does work nicely. :-TU

I have changed none of the settings. They are at whatever the defaults are. I haven’t even looked to be honest. I am not seeing replacement ads and for the most part, no blank spaces either. The pages are just shifting and filling those spaces.

On the Yahoo page for example, a few ads are blocked and not replaced by anything. The big banner ad for Netflix is allowed through. Does Privdog actually deliver different replacement ads or just block those that are not considered safe and allow the others through? The latter seems to me to be the case.

I have a tracking protection list from privacychoice.org installed in IE 10 and it has a whitelist of accepted advertisers as well. When I go to Yahoo, every ad is gone in IE but in Dragon, only a few get blocked.

Again, while I can’t say for sure, this does not seem to be intended behavior.

The stated intention of PrivDog is to block third party ads on a given website, and replace them with “clean” ads from AdTrustMedia. This way potentially harmful ads are blocked, while the website can still collect ad revenue from the replacement ads.

If it’s blocking ads, but not replacing them with “good” ads, then it’s doing roughly the same thing any other ad blocker would do…

I got this response in the bug report thread

So it seems that PrivDog will sometimes block ads but not replace them.

Interesting… So some ads are simply blocked. That’s not exactly what the premise of the product is advertised as. :-\

I assume that is because AdTrustMedia does not want to be associated with for example ■■■■■■■■■■■ or illegal things etc.

There are none of those kind of ads on the main Yahoo page but some ads are blocked and not replaced anyway. The ads that get blocked on mmo-champion.com do not get replaced either.

The way I understood the reply to my bug report (the one I posted before) is that they block ad-networks that advertise on such sites, not ads that advertise such things. So even if the ads are “clean” the ad-networks could be showing ads on sites with ‘questionable’ nature. I’m not saying this is the way it is, I am saying that it’s the way I understand it from the information provided but that does not make it correct.

correct. we don’t currently provide advertising for adult websites. although we block the ads.
We will evaluate this on regular basis.

This could be a bug.

Would you please report it in the bug section.

thank you!

Not if it has to be in the formatted form. I refuse to do that because I consider it to be a ridiculous requirement.

I asked a couple of my questions in PM for better understanding of your problem.