lewisje wrote:Her webmaster sure is crafty; webmasters have been known to watch forums like this to see why their ad impressions suddenly fell, and react accordingly.
Yes, the arms race has intensified.
In doing a bit of trial and error, I have noted the following:
1) Adblock (regardless of 'brand' or developer) will correctly identify and filter ie block the ad domains found in the source code of her home page (lanistaads.com, cas.criteo.com). Despite this, a group of the usual bizarre ads complete with disgusting photographs (why?!?!?) will display - but a temporary pause is noticeable before they render.
2) If Adblock and other countermeasures (eg NoScript) are disabled then typical Google-style ads that seem to have some relevance to browsing history, keywords, etc. will display (eg if you've looked at shoes on Amazon, then ads for shoes will display).
3) If Adblock is enabled, then the 'strange' ads - always the same group of them - will display.
4) NoScript (in Firefox) does not block the ads unless all JavaScript is blocked. Similarly, blocking Lucianne.com in the privacy/content section of Chrome does not work even though it is the top-level or host domain - blocking all JavaScript will, similar to Firefox/NoScript, stop the ads.
5) Site functionality (eg post, respond, search) seems to be unaffected by the complete disabling of JavaScript. However, this is probably not practical since it may render other sites unusable.
6) A view of the page source at Lucianne.com reveals huge blocks of script and multiple references to randomized numbers. I'm not a code expert by any means but it's clear they are attempting (and, for now, succeeding) into hoodwinking adblockers, script blockers, and browsers in general into displaying certain ads if their regular ads are defeated.
7) Blocking individual elements allows a block of 'nth of type' graphic and line of code but 'nth' is a random number so blocking it once has no effect on future page loads ie reloading the page reloads the ads.
8 ) Adding her ad domains to a firewall or a hosts file has no effect although the blocks are logged and/or valid in testing.
In sum, the site is doing an end-run around ad and script blocking by checking to see if their ads have been blocked and if so they are displaying the usual clickbait.
Annoyance factor aside, this is a very dangerous game for any webmaster to play as malicious sites could employ the very same tactic with the potential for much more destructive outcomes.
