System-wide Ad Blocker

Question

I intend to build an Ad Blocker application that blocks ads on all browsers. Some Ad Blockers have plugins for each browser, but I think that's a lot of work and incompatibilities. I'm thinking on an application that works like a firewall for ads. The main OS is Windows, of course.

Is possible to write something that works on all Windows versions (2000, XP, VISTA, 7) ? What is the best approach for this kind of software ?

Voting to close because it's overly broad. – tenfour Mar 15 '11 at 11:50 — tenfour, Mar 15 '11 at 11:50
Did you try to use a personal firewall for this? – Doc Brown Mar 15 '11 at 11:50 — Doc Brown, Mar 15 '11 at 11:50
I'm trying implement one in C/C++/C# – Andrew Mar 15 '11 at 12:08 — Andrew, Mar 15 '11 at 12:08

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 22 '18 at 14:07

Some VPN's have a system-wide ad-blocking system.

Private Internet Access and NordVPN both have an integrated ad-blocking system. This means even when you use various browsers or applications which connect to the internet, you can block ads. Both are integrated differently though because PIA works flawlessly. NordVPN does not work as well, sometimes it blocks ads, sometimes not. They claim to block malware and trackers too.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 15 '11 at 11:41

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you can not do so dynamically, because every popup is instance of your browser and calls to ad url, so system can not differentiate if you make call or popup

answered Mar 15 '11 at 11:41

Nirmal- thInk beYond

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Ad Blocker doesn't mean only pop-up blocker. – Andrew Mar 15 '11 at 11:45
i got it, but main thing is that how to identify? how to distinguish – Nirmal- thInk beYond Mar 16 '11 at 04:14

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 15 '11 at 12:07

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Technically it is possible to do this by filtering packets in a manner similar to a firewall, but it is much harder to do and not as elegant. The biggest problem is that you have to reassemble HTTP responses into HTML documents and parse them yourself. Then you have to strip out the elements that display ads or popups, reassemble the HTTP response, and send it back out to the destination (e.g. the browser). If you are running in the browser you get the HTML document assembly for free and don't have to worry about network traffic at the packet level. Also, in the browser you can have UI elements (toolbar, configuration/statistics dialog, etc). We actually do ad filtering at the packet level in our current product; trust me - it sucks.

answered Mar 15 '11 at 12:07

Luke

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So what you suggest ? Plugins for each web browser ? – Andrew Mar 15 '11 at 12:24
That's what I would do. Obviously the implementations are going to be a bit different, but the concepts will be the same. – Luke Mar 15 '11 at 14:17
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@like: how will u filter? on which base? how do u identify as ad? – Nirmal- thInk beYond Mar 16 '11 at 04:13

System-wide Ad Blocker

3 Answers3