103-early-anti-adblock
Security and privacy
adblock detection
SHOW HN2024
103-early-anti-adblock
Detecting adblock, without JavaScript, by abusing HTTP 103 responses
github.com#adblock detection#http 103#early hints#server-side detection
How HN took it
2 positive, 22 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 14 critical, out of 38 comments about the project. Thread score -0.25.
Idea: 2 for, 8 againstPerformance: 0 for, 2 againstDocs: 0 for, 1 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 1 againstExecution: 0 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Clever use of HTTP 103 to detect adblockers
From 1 comment
My first question was "Why would someone do this and release it?" but it looks like they answered that question at the end of the README. :(
jedberg on HN
Objections
Chrome does not let adblockers interact with early-hints resources
From 1 comment
> Chrome does not allow adblockers to interact with resources loaded using early hints, nor does it display resources loaded using early hints in the developer console. I wonder…
esbranson on HN
Proxies may block HTTP 103 responses, making it unreliable
From 1 comment
Probably too unreliable to use in real life - for example, I suspect many crappy corporate proxies will block HTTP 103 responses as some unknown danger.
thenewnewguy on HN
Firefox or adblockers could simply fetch the hints and hide them
From 2 comments
This makes sense, but I guess adblockers could just start loading the data and not show it to the user?
guitarlimeo on HNTIL about HTTP 103, that's pretty neat. It seems pretty easy to mitigate this by always loading the early hints though, as in Firefox should adopt Chrome's approach as described…
kevmo314 on HN
Requests
Make a WordPress plugin from this
From 1 comment
Can someone make this into a Wordpress plugin?
terrycody on HN
Questions
Is this already exploited in the wild?
From 1 comment
Is this already being exploited by any sites in the wild? If not, then I kind of wish that it would have been privately reported to Mozilla and the major ad blocker developers to…
josephcsible on HN
Alternatives named
Proof-of-work captchas
From 1 comment
I'd prefer to see proof-of-work based captchas. I'd much rather give up 10 minutes of CPU time for a token that can be revoked as soon as I actually use it for evil than give up…
Adverblessly on HN
DNS-level blockers like Pi-hole and NextDNS
From 1 comment
Are people still relying on only browser plugins to de-trash their browsing experience? DNS is your friend. Block the asshats at their media delivery source. DNS Filter, NextDNS,…
unstatusthequo on HN