Sneaky sites evading adblock

bgeer · Post by **bgeer** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 1:58 am

I had noticed cookies being offered for domains that weren't showing up in adblock, and I finally figured out what's going on...

usatoday.com loads: http://c.usatoday.com/clear.gif
which redirects to: http://tcookie.usatoday.com/tacoda/prim ... /clear.gif
which in turn redirects to: http://c.usatoday.com/clear.gif?tid=3gv9icn11ik220

Seems like usual evasive spyware stuff right? But get this... Adblock can not block tcookie.usatoday.com! There is apparently no adblock check during the redirect, so whatever url is given in the redirect, gets loaded, and there's no record of where it came from either in Adblock or "View Page Info".

Guest_ · Post by **Guest_** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 5:51 am

You found yourself a genuine webbug. this filter tends to block it

Code: Select all

/\/c\..*(gif\d*)/

not sure if it will block wanted content but it's worth a try.

bgeer · Post by **bgeer** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 5:05 pm

I know how to block clear.gif

The point is that adding tcookie.usatoday.com to adblock doesn't block tcookie.usatoday.com from trying to set a cookie.

Actually I've now noticed several sites doing this. The pattern is c.foo.com/clear.gif .. here's a more specific filter:
/http:\/\/c\.[^\/]+\/clear\.gif/

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Sep 17, 2005 1:09 am

Bill80 · Post by **Bill80** » Sun Sep 18, 2005 12:42 pm

http://aasted.org/adblock/viewtopic.php?t=2357

There is a guy over on the Adblock forum who has built a series of web bug filters.

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Sneaky sites evading adblock

Sneaky sites evading adblock

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