
AdTrap removes ads between your modem and router - extraio
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/600284081/adtrap-the-internet-is-yours-again
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kylec
This is actually a really interesting product, but there are very few details.
My big concern is one of trust - if I'm going to literally route all my
network traffic through this device, how can I trust that it's not doing
something nefarious? Also, what kind of performance does this device offer?
Given that it's inspecting every connection, this might put a limit on the
throughput it can provide and/or add additional latency. Also, how transparent
is it to the network? Does it do its own version of NAT or does it just
passively inspect the traffic that passes through?

~~~
Karunamon
>If I'm going to literally route all my network traffic through this device,
how can I trust that it's not doing something nefarious?

How do you know that your modem, router, and ISP aren't doing something
nefarious? Somehow I doubt a product which explicitly does Bad Things© to your
datastream will sell well.

~~~
spindritf
> How do you know that your modem, router, and ISP aren't doing something
> nefarious?

I run Linux on my router and encrypt traffic of any value beyond it. This
being HN, it's probably not a particularly unusual setup.

Which brings me to the most important question about that device, why not move
its functionality to the router? Why yet another box?

~~~
vegardx
At some point you will have to trust another part. I could easily use a VPN to
another location, but there would probably be someone at that location which
would be able to intercept the traffic. The only way to be sure is to use end-
to-end encryption, and unless those you are "talking to" support it, it's
little you can do about it.

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buro9
Interesting.

Would love to see how they work on picking adverts out of SSL pages.

Would also love to see how they deal with tracking and affiliates stuff in
addition to banner adverts.

That latter one is an issue for me, I've found some sites to be simply
unusable if AdBlock or Ghostery is running in my browser.

It's usually tracking code (LinkedIn Inbox is useless to me as are sites that
add Omniture to their shop button), and occasionally I go to buy something
which is an affiliate link and it gets treated as an advert click and stopped.

So it's important not to go too far and break the internet either (though in
my view it is the sites that add all this stuff that are breaking it).

If this stuff is all in a black box without external configuration... then how
do you correct the false positives?

~~~
makira
You can block many ads on SSL pages just by denying any DNS resolving to
hostnames associated with ads.

But that won't catch everything.

~~~
buro9
That was the problem with the false negatives.

I noted a friend who used this <http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/>

All looked good, but as it includes more than just banner advertisers (shock
sites, tracking sites - privacy issues) he'd have more false positives than I
did.

Ghostery and the like (browser plugins) are reasonably easy to just disable
when you come across an instance that it breaks functionality in a web page.
But using a hosts file or DNS block, it was much more opaque about why it was
failing as you'd have to remember something you'd forgotten about: You've
blocked this thing at the DNS level, it wouldn't resolve. Or more to the
point, it would resolve to a local web server that served up zero bytes.

That's my worry with a black box on the line... how easy is it to override in
those edge cases, and will they play safe by sticking just to known banner
adverts and not tracking sites which are sometimes necessary parts of
functionality (due to the fact that links are redirected via the tracking
site).

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webjunkie
No ads on the Internet? Seriously, how do you think the economy would work
without ads? If everyone got one of these, I could tell my boss on monday to
close the company.

~~~
hyperbovine
Radical new model: charge money in return for services. I'd gladly pay Google
a nontrivial amount of money each month if it meant I could search and use
Gmail without having to worry about them amassing enough personal information
to predict the time and location of my bowel movements.

~~~
jiggy2011
Works for some things, but what about the phpBB forum for enthusiasts of some
obscure classic car that is run not-for-profit by an enthusiast who pays the
hosting bill by running a few banner ads from a company that sells refurbed
parts?

People who host these type of sites often give donate options but in most
cases the donations would not cover the hosting costs.

~~~
belorn
Most often, people who host these type of sites do it for free because they
want to contribute to the community the site serves.

I honestly do not know why people are surprised by this. People who play
sports (say football) have no issue driving kids to matches. People who goes
to bars, sometimes buy a friend a beer.

In a internet community of 10-500 people, someone will have the spare 10$ for
a domain name, and someone else will have a other spare 10$ for some server
space. sometimes, its the same person. Server and domain names are not
expensive, and is about the same cost of a few beers. If you spend hundred and
hundred of hours on the site, work on the design and add new features to it,
spending 20-30$ a month is basically a non-issue (just look at mmorpg
players).

The problem arrives when those 200 people turn into 200k people, but then, the
economy tend to change. Members fees, donations, t-shirts, and sponsorship
tend to be the solutions in those situations. If you have a site for classic
cars with 200k daily visitors, I doubt you will have a problem finding a
sponsor, even if you have a no-ads policy. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if a
car seller would not happily sponsor such community, and then send some nice
profession images of "nice looking cars, just by chance available to be
bought".

~~~
jiggy2011
These sites can quickly start to cost more than the $10 or so and can ramp up
to hundreds of $ a month quite easily. Not always something people have lying
under their sofa. Many of these sites can have about 10-100x more lurkers than
they do active users and also plenty of people who will pop up , ask one
question and then be "kthnxbye".

Once you start selling merch , membership fees etc it will suddenly start to
feel more like a business and require more effort on the part of the owner
which they may well not have time for.

Besides ads for sponsors or popups saying "buy a T shirt!" will be just as
annoying as other types of advertising.

~~~
belorn
$0.10 per GB-month of provisioned storage $0.10 per 1 million I/O requests

Apply to above comment, and how large do you need to grow until hundreds of $
for a month? even if the cost goes up to 100$, isnt that like 5 beers?

~~~
jiggy2011
1 TB or more outgoing is not so uncommon once you factor in bots , crawlers ,
lurkers etc.

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PanMan
Interesting to do this in hardware, as it will work for all devices on your
network: also tablets and so on. However, I wonder how many people have
separate modems and routers: Most providers (here at least) have modem/wifi AP
combo's, which makes it impossible to put this in between.

Also, I wonder if some sites will stop working: e.g. I can imagine a video
with a pre-roll just never starting, when the pre-roll can't be loaded. And it
being hardware, this will be harder to skip.

~~~
samstave
At home I have a cable modem attached to my d-link WAP/router.

24/7 I have a verizon MIFI device as a hotspot for work.

I have been wanting an in-line wire filter for a long time. While I am not
concerned with ads as much, I'd love an inline wire FW that would be
configurable.

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dsr_
So this is a bridge-mode transparent HTTP proxy with Privoxy running on it?
[Or the equivalent thereof?]

Or does it do an SSL MITM attack on all your traffic?

The former is interesting mostly because it doesn't require end-user
configuration, so to a naive user it really is plug-it-in-and-works. The
latter is, as several have now pointed out, horrendously awful.

What nobody seems to have mentioned yet, though, is that you can turn the
first into the second with a code update.

~~~
nivla
I think all it does is to block/poison ad-based domain from resolving to their
respective IPs. Very low overhead and gives you the same result. You can also
achieve the same thing if you have a dd-wrt installed router:
[http://www.howtogeek.com/51477/how-to-remove-
advertisements-...](http://www.howtogeek.com/51477/how-to-remove-
advertisements-with-pixelserv-on-dd-wrt/)

------
diminish
I m confused how this is implemented. First of all only as a proxy it can
intervene ssl traffic. Without monthly fees how will they keep updating the ad
detection for diverse types of ads from text, image to video.

~~~
desas
They'll need to update their detection anyway for devices sold in future. I
would assume that the only cost of updating existing devices is the bandwidth
cost to download the rules or whatever.

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amalag
I am willing to see ads in return for the free services I get. I get free TV
shows without cable and free movies on Youtube. Really, what business model
does this kickstarter project advocate?

~~~
derleth
> what business model does this kickstarter project advocate?

One where ads are not so annoying people go to the trouble of buying this and
setting it up. Malware ads, video ads, ads deliberately designed to fool
people into thinking they have a virus and need to CLICK NOW! are all reasons
why people would be considering going to the immense trouble of getting this
little piece of gear and making it work for them.

~~~
momoney
There will always be new bad ads- so that's not a valid argument

~~~
derleth
> There will always be new bad ads

So there will always be people who block ads, then. It's not an argument so
much as a simple case of cause-and-effect.

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eli
Interesting idea. If it screws up and blocks the wrong thing, I can imagine it
would be hell to troubleshoot.

~~~
cracell
If it had a simple log of everything is blocked and you were a technical
person aware of it being on the network then it would be easy to troubleshoot
such situations.

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EvanAnderson
Invariably the device will have security vulnerabilities. The potential man-
in-the-middle access this thing will afford an attacker would be a treasure-
trove, especially if it has SSL bump-in-the-wire functionality.

~~~
jrabone
Why is it any worse than the current state of the browser SSL world? When was
the last time anyone went through the built-in CA certificate list and deleted
all the ones from countries with dubious human rights records, or companies
with less-than-stellar security history?

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brennenHN
We're all pretty sold on the idea that ads are a bad thing, but would we
rather pay for all of the content that is ad-supported?

~~~
mischov
Obviously we would _not_ rather pay. The internet is the bastion of free
(beer) information/stuff-that-can-be-transferred-electronically, and I think a
great percentage of users prefer said free-ness.

All the same, I am more and more convinced that subscription funded, high-
quality digital content production is the correct path for the future.

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adg001
What will prevent modem/router manufacturers from embedding an ad-filtering
proxy into their devices (ie, eroding the need for a specialized AdTrap)?

~~~
relix
Because like it or not, ads are a vital part of the internet.

~~~
adg001
I didn't questioned the ad-based internet ecosystem.

My question was about the AdTrap competitive advantage, if any.

I should have stated it better: assuming, for the sake of discussion, that we
want an ad-blocking device, what will prevent modem/router manufacturers from
embedding an ad-filtering proxy into their devices, tomorrow?

From the OEM perspective, more features means bringing more value. In turn, an
ad-blocking router/modem would erode the need for a specialized device a la
AdTrap.

~~~
relix
Ah I see, sorry I misinterpreted.

I think the routers where you can flash your own linux on, and run it as a
server, might already be able to do so. Other than that I think they innovate
too slowly to be a significant competitor to AdTrap, for now.

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halayli
I wonder what approach they'll take to advertise this product to the public.

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ig1
Could you just do this with a raspberry pi and at a much cheaper cost ?

