What's this ad.doubleclick. business?

[Loose rivets]

Every time I look to see what's holding the download, this :mad: thing is showing. Sometimes it brings me to a virtual standstill.

CCleaner rids me of it for one go, then it's back.

[MG23]

It's an ad site which infests the Internet and causes web pages to fail to load or load incredibly slowly because the doubleclick servers are overloaded. When I use a non-protected PC and a web page load is stuck I normally see that it's trying to download some ad from doubleclick.

Run Firefox and install an ad-blocking addon, or better yet edit the hosts file to redirect the doubleclick sites to localhost.

[Loose rivets]

I've got adblock Plus, and it works reasonably well, but I leave it off a lot of the time because it doesn't allow some pictures to be displayed, certainly on Pprune.

As for the other tip. Mmmm...where's me dunces cap?

[MG23]

In Linux you just add:

0.0.0.0 ad.doubleclick.net

to /etc/hosts. Windows has a similar file, but I don't remember where it is.

[Loose rivets]

This seems to be the file that was blocking one video in Pprune. I have no idea if they are all under one exclusion.

I guess it's just more CCleaners for me. Have no idea about the other process.



||s.ytimg.com/yt/swfbin/*

[mixture]

0.0.0.0 ad.doubleclick.net

What's the point of that ? Surely 127.0.0.1 would be the correct IP !


On windows from memory..... C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc

It's an ad site which infests the Internet

Come on, be fair and at least describe it correctly.

It's a pay per click banner advertising company which many websites use in an attempt to supplement their revenues.

So it's NOT an "infestation" .... it's not a virus, its the explicit choice of the webmaster to put it on their site.

[Tarq57]

Try this (http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm) hosts file.
I use Hostsman (http://www.abelhadigital.com/) (also linked to on the MVPS page) to manage/update it.

Blocks all known bad sites. Also blocks doubleclick. And a few others it deems unworthy.

The top link also provides a fair bit of useful info about how the hosts file works. Pretty good tool to use, in my opinion, for no resource consumed.

[call100]

allways found AdBlock plus to be effective....Also, it has never blocked any pictures on PPRuNe. AdBlock worked in FF and now in Iron.

[ericlday]

Call100....second that.

[Mike-Bracknell]

Please don't manually edit your hosts or lmhosts files. It creates no end of hassle for someone who has to troubleshoot your computer without knowing you've done it. Use an adblocking program or something similar instead. :ok:

/pet hate

[Saab Dastard]

Mike,

That may be appropriate advice for the corporate world, but where the end user is also the person who supports themselves, I think it is up to individuals as to whether or not they choose to block certain sites this way. It is up to them to remember that they did so.

SD

[mixture]

That may be appropriate advice for the corporate world, but

Saab,

Whilst I agree with your point that self-supporting users should be left to stew in their own swamp, it's not like Mike was trying to tell them they should be applying a domain-wide group policy to block the offending items.

In this instance, I think it is correct to educate the unwashed masses that editing the hosts file can lead to unintended consequences at some point in the future and that there are indeed perhaps other, more appropriate means, to reach the desired goal of blocking the offending banner ads that are well within the budgetary and technical reach of the lowly home user.

[Loose rivets]

The Hostsman thing sounds very tempting but at my level of expertise, I think I'll just try to master CC a little better.


All my installations of CC have been straight "out of the box". It has always blocked some, but not all, pictures and youtube video. This new installation is no exception.

Un checking the file above allowed the very depressing cartoon in a Do you want to be a pilot? type thread. cant find it now.:confused: Prior to that, there was a white box with a tab at the top, I guess offering to Block the space as well. I found it by process of illumination.

I'm sure I've never tried to block the content of any thread.

[Tarq57]

If CC means Ccleaner, that doesn't block anything.

[MG23]

What's the point of that ? Surely 127.0.0.1 would be the correct IP !

I remember some theological discussion about 0.0.0.0 vs 127.0.0.1 a couple of years ago, but forget the conclusion; I think it was that 0.0.0.0 is an invalid destination address so smart programs might not even try to connect, whereas 127.0.0.1 is valid so you'd have to wait for any program to try to connect and fail.

However, every program I've tried today still tries to connect to 127.0.0.1 if you give it 0.0.0.0.

[Loose rivets]

If CC means Ccleaner, that doesn't block anything.


No, my post seems to be a technical non sequitur, but when I catch the click word blinking bottom left, and everything grinds to snail's pace, I run CC and all's well for a while.

I can't fathom out what's happening, or even if it's just a coincidence, but it's worked perhaps a dozen times. I'd sooner have a proper fix for whatever's going on, because I'm concerned I may spend a lot of time in an intermediate state of slowness. Seems a bit that way these days, a disappointment for a new OS install. ( W7 Home Premium. FF 3 6 13 )

[Tarq57]

What's probably happening there is that Ccleaner is removing the cookie responsible, and doubleclick then stops trying to load.

Either an appropriate ad blocker, or noscript in Firefox (if you use it) or a hosts file (it's easy, really) will prevent it even attempting to load in the first place.

[mixture]

I think it was that 0.0.0.0 is an invalid destination address so smart programs might not even try to connect, whereas 127.0.0.1 is valid so you'd have to wait for any program to try to connect and fail.

As defined in RFC3330 ....



0.0.0.0/8 - Addresses in this block refer to source hosts on "this"
network. Address 0.0.0.0/32 may be used as a source address for this
host on this network; other addresses within 0.0.0.0/8 may be used to
refer to specified hosts on this network [RFC1700, page 4].

127.0.0.0/8 - This block is assigned for use as the Internet host
loopback address. A datagram sent by a higher level protocol to an
address anywhere within this block should loop back inside the host.
This is ordinarily implemented using only 127.0.0.1/32 for loopback,
but no addresses within this block should ever appear on any network
anywhere [RFC1700, page 5].




Thus. An IP from the 127.0.0.0/8 range shall be the correct destination when you wish to null route traffic (although on certain *nix/*nux boxes you can do some fancy tricks routing to /dev/null ... ).

However, every program I've tried today still tries to connect to 127.0.0.1 if you give it 0.0.0.0.

From the machine at which I am presently sitting.


$ ping 0.0.0.0
PING 0.0.0.0 (0.0.0.0): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 172.16.123.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.424 ms
64 bytes from 172.16.123.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.266 ms
^C

$ ping 127.0.0.1
PING 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.062 ms
64 bytes from 127.0.0.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.033 ms
^C


As you can see from the responding IP and the RTT time, it's not the same thing, and just to prove it.....

$ ifconfig en0 | grep 172.16
inet 172.16.123.194 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.123.255

$ route -n get 0.0.0.0
route to: default
destination: default
mask: default
gateway: 172.16.123.1
interface: en0
flags: <UP,GATEWAY,DONE,STATIC,PRCLONING>

$ route -n get 127.0.0.1
route to: 127.0.0.1
destination: 127.0.0.1
interface: lo0
flags: <UP,HOST,DONE,LOCAL>

[call100]

I'll suggest Adblock again....If you find it's blocking pics on PPRuNe then you can adjust Adblock settings to cope with that. I've never had it block anything but Ads on here. Certainly no posted pictures...
Which browser are you using as a matter of interest.

[Peter Fanelli]

Forget all this changing setting hoohaa.
Ad Muncher.
Gets everything including the ads at the beginning of many videos on news sites.
Not expensive
Works
Haven't seen an ad in years.

[WillDAQ]

Double click is an advertising network owned by Google.

The thing that CCleaner is removing is a tracking cookie.

Adblock, NoScript and TACO are all add ons for Firefox which will block the content (although in different ways).

[CR2]

In a similar vein, can the google-analytics stupidity be removed/blocked?

[green granite]

NoScript will block that by default CR2

[CR2]

Is that a software or something I have to fiddle with green granite

I just installed Adblock as previously suggested here; double-click seems to be taken care of :ok:

[green granite]

No script is an add on for firefox, it blocks scripts from sites that are peripheral to the main one.

[AnthonyGA]

Since I have my own DNS, I fixed this by changing the DNS entries to point doubleclick.net nowhere. As a result nothing loads from there and everything runs fast. I haven't seen anything from doubleclick in years.

[Saab Dastard]

Since I have my own DNS, I fixed this by changing the DNS entries to point doubleclick.net nowhere. As a result nothing loads from there and everything runs fast.

You can configure OpenDNS to do something similar. I like OpenDNS! :)

SD

[WillDAQ]

No Script is really the king of blocking stuff, however to get the best out of it you need to block by default rather than allow by default, which can be time consuming.

[Slasher]

Yep Adblock works fine - no annoying bloody ads and consequent delays anywhere from anyone.

If any new ones get through just go Tools -> Adblock Plus Prefences -> add filter (or use the
update subscriptions option which might have the new one on database anyway).

[Keef]

I use AdBlock, NoScript, and a pretty large hosts file, and I have none of those problems.

I can see why a corporate environment wouldn't like individuals editing their hosts files, but for my own machine it's invaluable.

[IO540]

I use noscript but it cripples many websites which take online payments.

The stupid Verified by Visa gets broken by it, for a start.

I use IE for buying stuff online, unless it is Amazon which works fine.