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- ChipMaster's Black Lists
- ========================
-
- These are provided simply for the curious. I'm actively using these
- lists to block traffic I don't want happening. I'm very militant
- about traffic on my network. I don't want my computers doing anything
- I didn't ask it to do. So I block for the following reasons:
-
- 1. I find a program reaching out across the net when there is no visual
- reason for them to do so. This could be any number of things
- like: update servers, feature use tracking, DRM tracking, ...
-
- 2. Website advertisers: IMO these are particularly nasty. Its not
- that I necessarily have anything against a site funding itself
- with ads. Although some sites are rude in how they place them or
- they perform rude, malware like actions. But the **REAL** risk,
- as far as I'm concerned, is that many cyber-thugs use ad services
- to distribute malware. Unfortunately the ad services don't seem
- to have any interest in vetting their scuzz.
-
- 3. Some host names are specifically used for tracking, like "g00gle
- analytics". I have nothing against a site owner wanting to know
- how their site is being used. All of us, with websites, want to
- know how popular the site is and specifically which pages are the
- most viewed and common occurring browse patterns, to tell us how
- we may be able to better our sites. But off-site trackers slow
- down my browsing experience and someone as massive as g00gle can
- aggregate this with a lot of other data sources to learn and sell
- waaay too much about me.
-
- 4. I want to deliberately block updates. Although as a Linux user
- that's not usually my concern. But I do it for clients to prevent
- M$ and others from breaking stuff. I also do it so I won't be
- constantly hounded by "I can't update" or "there is a new
- version" messages.
-
- 5. Unknown traffic being generated by device X, like Android
- devices. What on earth are they busy chattering about? That's
- malware like activity. Or maybe its **real** malware activity?
- =-O
-
- 6. Some location was causing me to _wait_. Common examples are the
- "like" buttons for major social networks. The off-site hosted
- code is either large, on a slow server or behaving in suspicious
- manner like taking too much CPU power. I've had some of those
- literally lock a machine up until I kill them. If nothing else
- this is extremely poor coding but it could be worse.
-
- 7. I just don't know what its for and I notice nothing wrong when I
- block it. :-D
-
- 8. Something in its behavior alerts me to potential danger.
-
- And there are other reasons something might tweak me funny and I say,
- "That's enough of that."
-
- All of that to say that the things I'm blocking might not actually be
- _bad_ but they annoy me for one reason or another and it may just be
- a philosophical disagreement on my part. But think about the enormous
- amount of browsing information that can be accumulated by g00gle
- simply hosting popular JavaScript libraries and then linking that to
- your g00gle login...
-
- Use any of this at your own peril.
-
- - ChipMaster
-
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