Adblocker Lists

[headstruck]

Hello again.

I can't see any documentation on what types of online lists are allowed (or accepted) to be imported into the Adblocker Rapp.

For example, here's two different lists in two different formats:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts
https://gitlab.com/quidsup/notrack-blocklists/raw/master/notrack-blocklist.txt

Will the Rapp properly parse these lists despite them clearly being in different formats?
If so, I think there should be an article in the knowledge base (or extend the current one) describing these different types that are supported.

I also think it would be a good idea to maintain a list here on the forums somewhere of known and maintained Adblock lists (for phishing sites, malware, advertising, tracking, etc).

Thanks

[Netduma Fraser]

Both should work but if the file is too big it may cause an issue. We are actually working on improving our knowledge base to account for DumaOS 3.0. Although as it's changing quite rapidly we're not doing this as fast as we normally would as we would have to rewrite it fairly quickly. Thats a great idea!

[headstruck]

14 minutes ago, Netduma Fraser said:

Both should work but if the file is too big it may cause an issue. We are actually working on improving our knowledge base to account for DumaOS 3.0. Although as it's changing quite rapidly we're not doing this as fast as we normally would as we would have to rewrite it fairly quickly. Thats a great idea!

May I suggest open-sourcing the knowledge base so that the community can contribute to it? It would definitely help with times like these, and I wouldn't mind investing some time into it myself 

[Netduma Fraser]

34 minutes ago, headstruck said:

May I suggest open-sourcing the knowledge base so that the community can contribute to it? It would definitely help with times like these, and I wouldn't mind investing some time into it myself 

Its a good idea but I think we would want to keep it editable only by ourselves as it would be a lot more work moderating all of that and also its a place where we can have official advice whereas on the forum the community can chime in

[headstruck]

2 hours ago, Netduma Fraser said:

Its a good idea but I think we would want to keep it editable only by ourselves as it would be a lot more work moderating all of that and also its a place where we can have official advice whereas on the forum the community can chime in

That's understandable. If it were behind GitHub and people could make PR's it wouldn't be that hard to moderate honestly, could even get some trusted people to verify and merge PRs.

 

Anyway, I have a QoL suggestion regarding the "Recent Domains" panel when viewing a history of domains blocked on a device:

The values under the "Time Since" column are being updated once every second, which means that scrolling up and down large lists can be quite laggy depending on how many are being updated at a time. A better solution would be to only update once every 10 seconds or a higher interval that's greater than the 1 second it currently has, it would make scrolling a breeze for these cases.

[Netduma Fraser]

I don't think that's a priority for us at the moment but I do get where you're coming from. Great suggestion, I'll pass it on, thanks!

[G1LL1G]

Is there a way to see or edit the built in lists for adblocker?  Do they auto-update?  I like a lot of the great features on the R2, but the lack of being able to control aspects like this is a downside for the more advanced users out there.  Currently I have the built in lists disabled and am using imported lists for this function, but if I knew what was on the built in lists and knew if they auto-updated from internet sources...  I'd more than likely opt for the automation vs. having to manually update the lists myself.

[Netduma Fraser]

47 minutes ago, G1LL1G said:

Is there a way to see or edit the built in lists for adblocker?  Do they auto-update?  I like a lot of the great features on the R2, but the lack of being able to control aspects like this is a downside for the more advanced users out there.  Currently I have the built in lists disabled and am using imported lists for this function, but if I knew what was on the built in lists and knew if they auto-updated from internet sources...  I'd more than likely opt for the automation vs. having to manually update the lists myself.

No way to see or edit them currently. Yes we update them ourselves based on user feedback/whatever we find. If anything is blocked that you don't want it to be then you can add it to the whitelist, if something isn't blocked that you want to be then you can add that as you've done so there is not much need in my opinion to have them editable - it's also good for basic users who may not understand what they're doing to keep them as they are and if allowed to edit they may cause unnecessary issues - just my 2 cents

[G1LL1G]

I ended up disabling the ad-blocker on the R2 and implemented a Pi-Hole so that I could have more control over the lists.  The adblocker on the R2 was one of the selling points for me.  Unfortunately though the Pi-Hole adblocker is superior to the R2 ad blocking (efficacy and usability for end users) and a lot less expensive - which is too bad because it would be nice to only have one device to handle everything.  The R2 leaves a lot to be desired for more advanced users.  I'm past my return date now after struggling with the R2...  Time to go back to something more stable that isn't so constrained configuration wise.  The R2 and DumaOS is a great idea in theory.  I really wanted it to work, but multiple weekly reboots, lax security features,  lack of configuration control for basic things like client DNS, adblocker, and the Geo-filter never worked right...  have pushed me back to my old TP Link.  I'm rooting for you guys...  maybe a few revisions of firmware from now some of the R2 issues will be fixed and I'll give it another go.  Hang in there.

[Netduma Liam]

5 hours ago, G1LL1G said:

I ended up disabling the ad-blocker on the R2 and implemented a Pi-Hole so that I could have more control over the lists.  The adblocker on the R2 was one of the selling points for me.  Unfortunately though the Pi-Hole adblocker is superior to the R2 ad blocking (efficacy and usability for end users) and a lot less expensive - which is too bad because it would be nice to only have one device to handle everything.  The R2 leaves a lot to be desired for more advanced users.  I'm past my return date now after struggling with the R2...  Time to go back to something more stable that isn't so constrained configuration wise.  The R2 and DumaOS is a great idea in theory.  I really wanted it to work, but multiple weekly reboots, lax security features,  lack of configuration control for basic things like client DNS, adblocker, and the Geo-filter never worked right...  have pushed me back to my old TP Link.  I'm rooting for you guys...  maybe a few revisions of firmware from now some of the R2 issues will be fixed and I'll give it another go.  Hang in there.

We really appreciate your feedback and I'm sorry to hear you couldn't get on with it. We're more than happy to troubleshoot the issues you were having as we making good progress on these sorts of problems and have fixed them for many users. Feel free to also elaborate on exactly what adblocker was lacking for you as we are always looking to improve!