Advice Request AdGuard tweaking (Yes, I confess, I did it again, changed adblocking strategy)

[Lenny_Fox]

Yes, I admit it is an addiction trying to get the most out of the combo DNS - Browser - Extensions, but to look at the bright side of life and put this in perspective, this is a decent addiction, does not cost me any money and does not offend people nor law.

I tend to switch between uBlockOrigin and Adguard extension and vica versa. I was happily using the combo NextDNS-uBlockOrigin until @oldschool and @silversurfer started to post about ClearURL and NeatURL. This triggered me to have a look at AdGuard Extension again. Benefit of Adguard is that it also has an option to check for malware (I have Smartscreen disabled because it sends full URL) PLUS AdGuard extension has a stealth mode (which is disabled by default). This stealth mode also has an URL cleaning option. The default set of URL parameters can be easily tweaked, by simply adding comma seperated parameters to the text input box.


Cleaning URL's
I added some tracking parameters of popular tracking networks in AdGuard's stealth option:

utm_source,utm_medium,utm_term,utm_campaign,utm_content,utm_name,utm_cid,utm_reader,utm_viz_id,utm_pubreferrer,utm_swu,utm_referrer,utm_social,utm_social-type,utm_place,utm_userid,utm_channel,gs_l,gs_Lcp,client,sclient,ei,sei,gws_rd,gs_gbg,gs_mss,gs_rn,ved,uact,fbclid,_hsenc,_hsmi,__hssc,__hstc,hsCtaTracking,sc_campaign,sc_channel,sc_content,sc_medium,sc_outcome,sc_geo,sc_country,elqTrackId,elqTrack,assetType,assetId,recipientId,campaignId,siteId,s_cid,itm_source,itm_medium,itm_campaign,itm_content,itm_term,spReportId,spJobID,spUserID,spMailingID,hmb_campaign,hmb_medium,hmb_source,mkt_tok,mc_cid,mc_eid,pk_campaign,pk_kwd,pk_source,pk_medium,pk_content

EDIT: it is easier to add the parameters Security123 made out of this list above in the next post!

__________

 

[Lenny_Fox]

@HarborFront , Yes rain2reign is correct, uou can either replace google.nl with google.* or use you country's top level domain country code (e.g. Google.sp or Google.de)

I only made it specific because Yuki was cmplaining about the inefficiency and lack of tokens.

Tokenization is how a search engine breaks down text for efficient searching/indexing, e.g. the search query "This is an example" has the tokens "this" and "is" and "an" and "example" smart tokenization omits useless non identifying tokens like "an"" , so it would use the tokens "This" and :"is" and "example" to search for results in token buckets. I guess adblock filtering engines use the same mechanism to check whether ( a part of) an url has a corresponding block rule.

Like @rain2reign mentioned uBO processes google.nl a tad more efficient than google.* To show that I appreciated Yuki's feedback I changed google.* to google.nl.

 

[SeriousHoax]

@Lenny_Fox Did you check other comments from the issue? Even "gorhill" commented there.

[English only] Questions about uBlock Origin/AdGuard · Issue #4 · Yuki2718/adblock

hi there yuki, hope you're doing ok. so, i need your help. do you think it's a bad idea to globally noop "wp.com, wordpress.com, wix.com, parastorage.com" and similar commonly used cms's with frequ...

github.com

 

[Lenny_Fox]

@Lenny_Fox Did you check other comments from the issue? Even "gorhill" commented there.

[English only] Questions about uBlock Origin/AdGuard · Issue #4 · Yuki2718/adblock

hi there yuki, hope you're doing ok. so, i need your help. do you think it's a bad idea to globally noop "wp.com, wordpress.com, wix.com, parastorage.com" and similar commonly used cms's with frequ...

github.com

Thanks, so my guess to break it down in several single line parameters was correct. and according to Gorhll the duplication of parameters (only done to add an axtra token) is not nessecary because uBO takes the token out of the removeparam value itself

_______________________________________________________

||google.*$removeparam=gclid,domain=google.*
||google.*$removeparam=gs_lcp,domain=google.*

 

[SeriousHoax]

Thanks, so my guess to break it down in several single line parameters was correct. but according to Gorhll the asteric can still be used and duplication of parameters (only done to add an axtra token) is not nessecary because uBO takes the token out of the removeparam value itself

_______________________________________________________

||google.*$removeparam=gclid,domain=google.*
||google*$removeparam=gs_lcp,domain=google.*

If there's anything else to discuss there with Yuki/gorhill then you may do that there on GitHub and share your findings here.

 

[HarborFront]

@HarborFront , Yes rain2reign is correct, uou can either replace google.nl with google.* or use you country's top level domain country code (e.g. Google.sp or Google.de)

I only made it specific because Yuki was cmplaining about the inefficiency and lack of tokens.

Tokenization is how a search engine breaks down text for efficient searching/indexing, e.g. the search query "This is an example" has the tokens "this" and "is" and "an" and "example" smart tokenization omits useless non identifying tokens like "an"" , so it would use the tokens "This" and :"is" and "example" to search for results in token buckets. I guess adblock filtering engines use the same mechanism to check whether ( a part of) an url has a corresponding block rule.

Like @rain2reign mentioned uBO processes google.nl a tad more efficient than google.* To show that I appreciated Yuki's feedback I changed google.* to google.nl.

One question.

If I use other search engines like DDG, Qwant etc. then there's no need of those below and others related to Google, right?

||google.*$removeparam=gclid,domain=google.*
||google.*$removeparam=gs_lcp,domain=google.*

 

[forgottenuser79643]

One question.

If I use other search engines like DDG, Qwant etc. then there's no need of those below and others related to Google, right?

||google.*$removeparam=gclid,domain=google.*
||google.*$removeparam=gs_lcp,domain=google.*

I am not entirely sure to be honest for the other engines. I just did a quick, but simple, search test to see if the URL in Firefox (my main browser) and Edge (default) would be any different. And they were both the same. In both cases the exact same URL "https://duckduckgo.com/?q=tweakers&t=h_&ia=definition" would come out.

But then I opened ClearUrls AMO in Firefox and I see 32 entries of ETag removals instead. I am not too well versed in ETags nor in removeparams though, so this might just be something completely insignificant for all I know. I did hover over several links in the search in DDG, however they didn't seem to contain any params at first glance (didn't click it though).

 

[cryogent]

Do these rules found in the above posts understand that they work in Adguard? because I see that uBlock Origin is mentioned at the same time

 

[Lenny_Fox]

@HarborFront correct rules are only for google search

@cryogent I don't know. AG extension has a user interface for stripping tracking parameters in stealth mode. So would make sence the AdGuard removeparam is part of the advanced features only available in desktop version.