I wish to block ALL my content from any users using an ad-blocking browser extension (ie. Adblock Plus for Firefox, Adthwart for Chrome).
How can I acheive this? Is there a server-side solution? Client-side?
Edit 1
This question regards the detection of ad-blocking browser extensions:
Detecting AdBlocking software?
I'm concerned with post-detection action.
Edit 2
A duplicate question was asked after mine, so I thought I'd link to it here:
Prevent Adblock Users from Accessing Website?
To detect if the user is blocking ads, all you have to do is find a function in the ad javascript and try testing for it. It doesn't matter what method they're using to block the ad. Here's what it looks like for Google Adsense ads:
if(typeof(window.google_render_ad)=="undefined")
{
//They're blocking ads, do something else.
}
This method is outlined here: http://www.metamorphosite.com/detect-web-popup-blocker-software-adblock-spam
It's like trying to block users from reading your contents while standing rather then while sitting. It's silly, and it's likely to drive visitors off your site. The last time i saw a "you're using adblock, that hurt web developing bla bla" i jst blocked that div with the element hiding helper. It was fun i admit. Most sites are almost unreadable as now, with flashing ads and pale contents. A good quantity of ads are, also, malevolent, disguised as part of the site they're in takes the user to bad places.
That's why you should not. If you still want to, bad news, you can't. As long as i can write $('.ad').hide() in my console, nobody can stop me from adblocking something. I sometimes give up when ads divs have a very generic class, id, or they haven't any, so that it's difficult to target them with the adblock element hiding helper (of course if they are not in the lists, in that case i dont even know they exists). So the best you can do probably is give to ads a class of .content or something you use also in other parts of the site. It's not much, but it' all you can do. And just because you can, it does not mean you should. The web marketing model have to change, and it will.
That I know of this is not directly possible. Most add blockers work by locking at the URLs that are being "requested" and either blocking directly, or looking at the content/mime-type and blocking based on that.
You might be able to do something by looking for signs of the adblocker, but this will be difficult at best.
Although I love my adblocker, it's about answering questions. You could check if an url that would normally be blocked by an adblocker is reachable, and continue only if that image/bla in question is loaded. otherwise, you just don't.
Related
I would like to know if there is a way to prevent the use of userscripts on my browser game site?
Many use Greasemonkey to have advantages over other players, and I would like a way to disable these scripts.
I found this old article, "How To Disable Greasemonkey On Your Web Site", but it's from 2005 and doesn't seem to work.
Combating a smart scripter is tough. They have the upper hand since their script can touch the page before your server does, and can block or replace just about anything. See this answer to a very similar question.
Your smartest, and most cost-effective countermeasure is to sanction the users who are "gaming" the game. Attack the burglar, not the lock-pick.
If you insist in a tech war with your users, nothing you do will block everybody, but you can make them work for it.
Here are some things you can do make life harder for scripters:
Frequently change the structure of the page, especially element ID's and CSS class names. If you can, periodically insert or remove elements, so that the key <div> is not always the 3rd one in the second <table>, for example.
Every time you make a change, monitor your logs for users who get a sudden decrease in performance or usage -- for however many hours or days it takes them to adapt their scripts.
Likewise, frequently change your javascript filenames, and change the names of any variables or functions that the scripter may use.
Write your click and keyboard event-handlers to only work for trusted events, for browsers that support it.
You can put key text, including countdown timers, in images with unpredictable names. Making it hard for the script to detect key events. Needing to do OCR ramps up the skill-level required by a Greasemonkey scriptwriter, considerably. (At least for now.)
If you move the key game action into Flash, it becomes an order of magnitude harder to script for. They may even have to reverse engineer your flash and replace it with one that has scriptable hooks. Switching to Flash will annoy and drive off users (like me), though.
See that answer for more but, again, the best and most cost-effective approach is to sanction the offending user(s). Be sure that your Terms of Service specifically forbids what they are doing, though.
As addition to Brock Adams' own answer, here's couple methods for finding a possible scripter.
Timed function that checks DOM tree and search for added elements that are not your code's creation, or look for missing elements.
Primarily finds scripter who alters UI, yet haven't read/understood the game's js-source.
Client-side.
"Missing element"-search may get false positives from people who use something like AdBlock Plus. Not really false positive, if aim is to rank them out, too.
Inspect cookie content and look for hints of user added content.
If scripter has to transfer information from page/session to another, and has/knows no other method, he may attempt to use cookies for this.
Inspect query/hash in URL for content not added by your code.
It's possible to try to transfer information to other pages by altering links.
Hash-content (# in URL) is accessible only client-side.
Inspect session/localStorage.
Client-side.
Disable access thru anonymizing services, like anonym.to.
Circumventable, but makes life harder for people using unwanted online-tools.
Allow access to game-page only if referer is correct, otherwise redirect to login-page.
Another method to limit access to game-pages from outside sources.
If you want to be a pain, kill active session when redirecting.
NOTE: All client-side functions can be circumvented by scripter who understands the code.
NOTE: Usage of these requires some wisdom and good planning. If doing things wrong, then with client-side stuff you risk of kicking users' browsers on knees or DDoSing your own server. Or you may end up banning least half of the userbase after an update on your own code, if you use too much automation.
Here's one of my scripts. It could definitely still use some work, but the framework is there (though you may need to wrap everything in a big function to make variables private)
var secureElements,secureTags,secureTagLoop,secureLoop,var secureReporter = secureAnalyzationFunction = 0;
function analyze(secureAnalyzation){
if(secureAnalyzation.indexOf("function ")!=-1){
secureAnalyzationFunction = secureAnalyzation.substring(secureAnalyzation.indexOf("function ")+9,secureAnalyzation.indexOf("()"));
secureAnalyzationFunction = secureAnalyzationFunction+"=undefined;";
eval(secureAnalyzationFunction);
}
}
function secure(){
var secureTags = ["script","link","meta","canvas"];
for(secureTagLoop=0;secureTagLoop!=secureTags.length;secureTagLoop++){
secureElements = document.getElementsByTagName(secureTags[secureTagLoop]);
for(secureLoop=0;secureLoop!=secureElements.length;secureLoop++){
if(secureElements[secureLoop].outerHTML.indexOf("verified")==-1){
analyze(secureElements[secureLoop].outerHTML);
secureElements[secureLoop].parentElement.removeChild(secureElements[secureLoop]);
secureLoop--;
secureReporter++;
console.log("Deleted "+secureReporter+" foreign elements.")
}
}
}
}
window.onload = function() {
secure();
setInterval(secure,1500);
};
Sorry, this is a bad question. I don't even know what the title should be. I'm a total noob at making websites so this might be easy to find but I just don't know the terminology to search for. I cannot find anything about how to do this...
What I want to do is have something like references/variables that I can use in a block of text and it will automatically get replaced with whatever value should be there. Best way I can think of to describe it would be if I was using the site as a design doc for a game or something, I would be able to type in [Title] or something similar on any page and when it loads that text would be replaced with whatever my Title is. That way If I ever change titles, names, classes, races, places, items, etc... they would only have to be changed in 1 place and the change would be reflected everywhere.
I notice if I add a link to a page it will automatically use the Title of that page as the text of the link. That is almost exactly what I want. Except when I change the Title of the other page the text of the link remains as the original text. It doesn't get updated to the new Title and that is not at all what I want.
Also, I want to do this in Google Sites and as simply as possible. I don't really want to use a database. I was hoping Google Sites would have some kind of funcionality for this.
I don't believe this is possible (on Google Sites) and likely you need to consider a hosted solution.
Quoting the answer from this relevant post:
You should consider hosting your solution using Google's App Engine
instead of Google Sites. You can set it up so it uses PHP (see link
below), you can configure it to use your domain name and you get
enough CPU, disk and bandwidth allowance to serve around five million
page views for free each month, if you are serving more than that,
their prices are extremely competitive.
Google App Engine:
http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/whatisgoogleappengine.html How
to setup PHP using Google App Engine: http://blog.caucho.com/?p=187
Also I'm not sure how your PHP skills are but if you're unfamiliar with it then this should help to get you started.
I don't think it's possible from what I've read, but wanted to see if anyone else was in a similar situation and found a more elegent solution to this problem.
Basically I have a site I am building, nothing fancy, which consists of a header section, and then one big iframe to display the content of the page in.
I know, I know, iframe are generally looked upon with displeasure, but for my needs, it works wonders.
My issue, is that in the header of the page, I have a simple google search box (basically just an html form), and have set the target as my iframe.
Obviously when searching for anything, the results should show up in the iframe, however, all i get is a message saying this content can't be displayed in an iframe. This makes sense and im sure it is of googles design not to allow this kind of practice.
For me, this would be the most ideal situation, and was wondering if anyone knew of a way to display the search results within my iframe?
I have also looked at possibly displaying a lightbox, or similar popup box, with an ajax request to display the google page, but have thusfar been unsuccessful.
You won't be able to use any kind of frame anymore as Google obviously put an end to that by blocking frames altogether. Your only solution is to use the custom search API and then parse and display the results yourself.
I'm trying to get rid of the error pop-up window that appears in IE saying "page contains both secure and non-secure items". I have made sure all the links are pointing to https:// rather than http://. I have also looked at the fiddler and firebug logs to see that all the requests are being made to https:// links only.
Here's a similar question asked on SO : IE - "This page contains both secure and non-secure items"
The guy whose answer was accepted hit right on target. I wish I knew how he debugged to narrow down to that solution.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks
You don't need to actually load a resource in order to trigger the warning, a reference is all it takes. The <object> used to load a Flash applet is enough (if you reference the HTTP URI for the Flash Plugin).
The easiest thing to do is to open up the source and search for 'http:' with your editor. If that doesn't turn up anything, do the same with the output of document.getElementsByTagName('html')[[0].innerHTML.
You could either do a top-down or bottom-up approach to try to track down the issue. Top-down is where you'd start commenting out stuff until it goes away while in the bottom-up case you strip out everything and then slowly start adding back in things like Flash, Javascript, and CSS as it may be some include or function that is the culprit.
How can we restrict a user from saving the page?
Please provide some tips to disable File->Save and View Source options
EDIT: Obviously it can't be done, and probably shouldn't be attempted. But possibly a more interesting variant on this question is how can we make is sufficiently hard for a user to save a page in a usable format such that it is not worth their while doing so? The question doesn't pose a value, but say we were protecting an article subscription site where the user is paying a few hundred dollars per annum for continued access to text.
Since the page has been sent to the client, there will always be a way to get that information. Trying to stop a user from doing this will only frustrate them.
The only way to have a user not be able to save a file is to not send it to them.
While the best answer is "Don't do this," there are ways to make it more difficult for them. And since the point of this site is actually answer the question even if it's bad, here is the best way:
First you'll need to have the page open in a new window where you turn off the address bar and toolbar and everything else. That will make it so the user can't easily get to the File menu at all. To do this you'll need a "splash" page that the user loads to and then when they click a link, it opens the popup that serves the main content of your page. Details on how to create popups without things like the toolbar are here:
http://blazonry.com/javascript/windows.php
Then you'll want to add some javascript to each page that prevents the user from right clicking. Here is one method:
http://javascript.about.com/library/blnoright.htm
Finally, if it's your Javascript code that you don't want to be seen, then obfuscating your code is a pretty effective way to do that. They can still see the code if they have much know-how, but the obfuscated code would be a gigantic pain to actually interpret. There are lots of obfuscators out there; here is a free web-based one:
http://www.javascriptobfuscator.com/
This is far from foolproof. It will stop all "casual" users, but any power user will probably be able to easily figure out a way around it. Still if the idea is to at least prevent a good majority of it then this should suffice.
Update for updated question:
To address your new expanded question, I would say the best way to accomplish what you're saying is to use a format that supports DRM. Adobe Acrobat would probably be the best choice because almost everyone has the reader installed. You can prevent PDF files from being saved to the computer so that they can only be loaded from the webpage by a logged in user. The user could still do a screen capture of the document itself which I don't believe is preventable (unless Adobe Reader has some security in place for this, which they might) but it should be sufficient security for most uses.
Don't do it.
Seriously, if the user can see the page in their browser they can see the source code and/or save it to their computer.
You are fighting a losing battle here.
What about the browser's cache? It can be saved from there.
What about a print screen? That could also save the page.
The only way to prevent a user from saving something is to not show it to them in the first place.
It's really a waste of time and resources to try and do this in html as any method you use can be trivially circumvented.
Instead I would use some other technology to display the data - you can never get around a screen capture. but if you're for instance displaying text and you want to make it hard for the use to save that text for use elsewhere then possible options include
PDF - which can disable save and print. There are extensions to most popular web languages that will write a pdf on the fly. Indeed you might be as well just to go down the DRM route with Adobe and embed a document
Flash - most probably via Flex which could be used to write a general-purpose app to display text and images. The advantage of Flash is that it's easier to set up links than pdf.
Or something else, a custom java applet, or even a vrml plugin and display the text in 3D!
In all cases you could display text against a disruptive background to make OCR more difficult, and images could be watermarked. However nothing is going to stop a determined and resourceful viewer, although you can possibly make it sufficiently hard that it's not worth their time.
The least you can do is... the content is generated dynamically by Javascript. In that way, they cannot simply save it. Of course, in FX, they can still view the generated code and then copy&paste. however, normally people cannot save the page.
It shouldn't be an issue, but if you really don't want a user from seeing your code (javascript, css or html) for some reason, than you could use some obfuscation tool which makes the code less readable.
Try javascript "encoding" and obfuscation.
Something like
if(document.location == 'mydomain.com') {
content = getAjax('mycontent.xml');
// content will hold something like 72, 94, 81, 99, ... - encoded ASCII codes
document.write(String.fromCharCode(content));
}
It will always be possible to save the page, but for non-technical guys it will be harder to make it work.
There are 2 protections
domain name
converting ASCII
It's only pseudocode, but I think you get the idea.
add these to code sets in script tag
document.addEventListener('contextmenu', function (e) {
e.preventDefault();
});
document.onkeydown = function (e) {
return false;
};
I'd like to add one more method which, imho, is hard to circumvent: Ctrl+S! (for me, Apple+S)
how can we make is sufficiently hard for a user to save a page in a usable format such that it is not worth their while doing so
Nothing hard: add on every page: "Personal property of John Stealer, company Zetabeta, paid with credit card 756890987654, billing address ..., subscription expires 12/20".
This is an "extended text format" that I just invented... it has an amazing property: though it looks like a regular text, user is much less willing to print it out and give to others...