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Xeroday / Spotify-Ad-Blocker

EZBlocker - A Spotify Ad Blocker for Windows
https://www.ericzhang.me/projects/spotify-ad-blocker-ezblocker/
GNU General Public License v3.0
1.85k stars 192 forks source link

Sound ads are not blocked #80

Closed Gudui closed 6 years ago

Gudui commented 8 years ago

After the new Spotify update, 1.0.28. Sound ads are reintroduced.

Is there any upcoming fix, are there new domains/ip addresses that needs to be blocked?

Thanks in advance.

ilbonte commented 8 years ago

I'm using Spotify 1.0.28.87.g8f9312a4 on Win10 and I don't have any issue so far. Do you have the lastest relase? https://github.com/Xeroday/Spotify-Ad-Blocker/releases

Xeroday commented 8 years ago

Are you sure EZBlocker is open? It will automatically close if Spotify is restarted. I've tested on W7 + W10 and it works fine.

Gudui commented 8 years ago

@ilbonte @Xeroday Yes i am sure that I have the latest version and that EZBlocker is running. It still mutes the sound ads(as i can see is implemented in the source code), but it doesn't total block them as before.

ilbonte commented 8 years ago

Maybe there are some location-based ads that are not filtered? May I ask where are you from?

Gudui commented 8 years ago

Denmark, everyone else i know, from Denmark, who have been using this application without any problems also experience sound ads.

Anything i can do to help?

Xeroday commented 8 years ago

Can you copy and paste what's in your host file? It's located in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts. You can open it up with Notepad.

Gudui commented 8 years ago

@Xeroday I have the following in my hosts file. 0.0.0.0 pubads.g.doubleclick.net 0.0.0.0 securepubads.g.doubleclick.net 0.0.0.0 www.googletagservices.com 0.0.0.0 gads.pubmatic.com

Should correspond exactly to the newest version of EEblocker. https://github.com/Xeroday/Spotify-Ad-Blocker/blob/master/EZBlocker/EZBlocker/Form1.cs#L32

Thanks in advance

As mentioned, everyone else from Denmark i know, also has the issue when using EZBlocker :). Every banner ad etc. is blocked, but sound ads came back after the new spotify update.

Burpomatic commented 8 years ago

I'm experiencing the same issues as Gudui (ads are muted, but not skipped like they used to a few days ago). I live in Canada, running windows 7, spotify 1.0.28.87.g8f9312a4, EZBlocker 1.6.5, same content as Gudui in my hosts file. Any other information I could share to help you track the problem?

Gudui commented 8 years ago

I've installed CurrPorts and i've tried to listen for hosts from the Spotify client. When the ads come up, the following addresses has been shown as 'new' in the monitor.

ee-in-f95.1.e100.net on3-weblb-wg2.lon3.spotify.com lon3-weblb-wg3.lon3.spotify.com sto3-weblb-wg4.sto3.spotify.com

Seems like they have a lot of subdomains for sending ads.. I'll catch the ips next time

Raditude commented 8 years ago

I am also experiencing the same issue. I'm from the US and I'm running Spotify on windows 10. I just updated EzBlocker to the latest version as well. I've also noticed there are banner ads at the bottom are displaying ads now too, as well as a pop up type ad that comes up for a second when I maximize the window. I've used EzBlocker for a while and it's worked have not had these issues up until today.

agonarg commented 8 years ago

Hi, I am also getting some of the the visual ads, though the sound ones get muted. It is due to the latest Spotify update I'm afraid. I created an issue but then I bumped into this thread and closed it (sorry!).

Thanks for this amazing program though.

Xeroday commented 8 years ago

Latest version should be working. Tested on Win 7/10 in USA. Audio + banner ad blocking is technically still experimental.

GermanCoding commented 8 years ago

Still not blocking (audio + banner + video) on the latest EZBlocker version (1.6.6.0) in Germany even though I cleared the complete cache to force a re-download of possible cached ads. Looks like they have some new ad servers, I made a quick investigation with Wireshark and my suspection is that Spotify is now able to download ads directly from the "access point" servers where also the main connection is running.

Edit: One thing I forgot: The frequency on how often ads are displayed is very differently. Sometimes no ads for ~20-60 minutes, sometimes ads every 3 songs.

My Spotify version is 1.0.28.87.g8f9312a4 Windows 7

HOSTS file contents: 0.0.0.0 pubads.g.doubleclick.net 0.0.0.0 securepubads.g.doubleclick.net 0.0.0.0 www.googletagservices.com 0.0.0.0 gads.pubmatic.com 0.0.0.0 ads.pubmatic.com

Gudui commented 8 years ago

I'm experiencing the exact same as @GermanCoding @Xeroday Please don't close this issue, people around the world are having issues.

Xeroday commented 8 years ago

It's very time-consuming to find ad hosts, especially if they are region dependent and are potentially served from the same hosts/IPs as regular content. EZBlocker will always fall back to muting the ads, which was the original intent of the program.

That being said, could you guys try 1.6.6.2, which blocks a new host.

GermanCoding commented 8 years ago

Thank you Xeroday! The change you made in the HOSTS file match with the changes I made locally in my file (altough I added a few more hosts and made a redirect not only to localhost but also to real webservers which respond to Spotify's HTTP requests to confuse Spotify's ad-finding algorithm). Now ads are totally blocked again for me.

I know the "block all ads" function is not the main feature of this program, but for many users it's the most important feature (the blog comments suggest that), so thank you for re-opening the issue.

Gudui commented 8 years ago

@Xeroday Totally understandable. I'll help sniffing ads address received from Denmark.

agonarg commented 8 years ago

Latest v1.6.7.0 working flawlessly in Spain now. Thanks for the update.

GermanCoding commented 8 years ago

I had a report today from a friend that since the Spotify update 1.0.29.92.g67727800 ads are played again. I will do my best to search for the new hosts.

Edit: This appears to be false, but I'm still checking.

GermanCoding commented 8 years ago

@CHEF-KOCH Why should it not work with SSL? Spotify already uses a mixture of HTTP/HTTPS and some own protocol for data transfer. The blocklist EZBlocker provides is just an entry in the HOSTS-file of the OS. This prevents the OS from resolving the domain names of Spotify's ad servers to IP addresses by redirecting them all to localhost. This method blocks all traffic, independent from the protocol. However, it is indeed very easy to create an algorithm to detect such blocking and some day the developers of Spotify might fix it. The HOSTS file itself is designed as a blacklist (or more exactly: as a filter), not as a whitelist.

JohnTheGr8 commented 8 years ago

It has been almost a month without a good solution (I tried myself but got frustrated and gave up after 20+ sub-domains) so here's simple workaround for the time being:

and everything is back to how it used to be. I am not sure about version 1.0.29, but 1.0.28 didn't seem to have anything added apart from the dreadful ads.

Cheers