#489 Why are blocked banners (checkerboard) still clickable?

[Manuel Nickschas]

Hi,

I have been using Privoxy for a while, and I am quite happy with it, but there is something I do not quite understand: If it blocks banners, i.e. replaces them with the checkerboard pattern (or blank or whatever is set in the configuration), the area remains still clickable. This is especially annoying if I have ads and banners replaced by the blank graphics, because then I get invisible ads on screen, but clicks on them still take me there.

This results in me clicking more ads than I ever did before I started using Privoxy ;-) Now I'm sure that can be tweaked somewhere, but I did not find the setting? Can somebody help me out?

Thanks,
-- Manuel

[Nobody/Anonymous]

Logged In: NO

The link should probably be rewritten to point to something useful, such as a screen that allows you to fine-tune the filtering settings.

[iWantToKeepAnon]

Logged In: YES
user_id=192651

Think of the process. The browser downloads some HTML, parses it. Then
farms off a bunch of additional requests for CSS, images, JS, etc...

Privoxy is blocking the secondary request for the image. At this point privoxy
can not read or modify the HTML. To eliminate the link means writing a
filter instead. But not all images needing blocked are in anchor tags. That
makes writing an effective filter very difficult. And since image URLs can be
relative, you'd have a very hard time writing good regexps.

It comes down to which way you attack the problem, and privoxy (and
junkbusters) choose to filter the actual request instead of modifying the
HTML. But, thanks to GPL softward, you have the freedom to try to change
that choice.