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Why are ads on youtube not being blocked?!

JesseB.

Hi.

So, I've been struggling for a while trying to completely and utterly block ads from ever loading in Youtube videos. It seems like, no matter what I do, no matter what I block in UTM, nothing works. And this is very frustrating and is really beginning to piss me off.

 

HTTPS Filtering is turned on.

I've tried many different methods, I've blocked several application categories, different domains, urls and other stuff. I've even blocked QUIC completely.

But nothing is working. Ads are still getting through on YouTube. And I'm about fed-up with this.

If anyone has any suggestions, or anything that works PLEASE TELL ME! I do NOT want to block youtube completely.

 

App Control : 

Custom Filter Action : 

Website Filtering # 1 : 

Website Filtering # 2 : 

Website Filtering # 3 : 

Website Filtering # 4 : 

Firewall Rule on QUIC

 

These are just some of the troublesome URLs that seem to get through, despite everything I've put in place.

www.youtube.com/.../ads
www.youtube-nocookie.com/gen_204
www.youtube.com/.../
www.youtube.com/annotations_invideo
www.youtube.com/.../adview



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  • 0

    Hi,

    you are assuming that the access is coming through the http proxy. Try disabling all your firewall rules and see if they can still access youtube?

    XGS118 - v21.5.0

    XG115 converted to software licence v21.5.0

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  • 0

    Hi Jessieb,

    Check out the link below:

    https://community.sophos.com/products/unified-threat-management/f/web-protection-web-filtering-application-visibility-control/46207/speeding-up-webbrowsing-by-blocking-advertisers-and-trackers

    We only went as far as steps 1 & 2. However, the result was that we now get very few (if any) ads at the start of any YouTube videos.

    Hope this helps,

    JP

    2 x SG450 (Version 9.714-4)

    HA = Active-Passive

    • +2 in reply to isoffice

      Did all that initially when I setup the UTM. YouTube ads still got through. 

      Today, I finally decided to spend time actually looking into this and figuring out why ads were still not being blocked. It looks like Google cleverly integrated them into Youtube as normal videos, only, including a specific query in the URL which classifies it as a specific type of ad or ad-video.

      I've compiled a RegEx that works wonderfully and actually filters out YouTube ads while allowing normal non-ad videos to play just fine.

       

      (([A-Za-z0-9.-\/]+)?)pageid\=[0-9]{1,30}

       

      I've spent the last hour and a half making sure it works and videos work normally, while ads remain blocked. And sure enough, even VEVO videos shut out ads. :)

      Here's an example URL I got this from, if you're interested : 

      [code]https://www.youtube.com/get_video_metadata?video_id=ufkgkH7O4QA&html5=1&page_subscribe=0&authuser=0&pageid=108398601314690181974[/code]

          Jesse B.
          Help up-vote the full support of QUIC in UTM's Web Filter!

      • 0 in reply to JesseB.

        Do you mind sharing where and how you setup this regex in Sophos?

        I've noticed that Sophos has become pretty useless at blocking nearly any ads so I've resorted to setting up and using Pi-Hole instead. So far, that is working like a charm but the YouTube ad blocking isn't really working well in Pi-Hole. Would love to implement this to close the gap on blocking as many ads as I can.

        • +1 in reply to NashBrydges

          Here you go!  [:D]

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          • 0 in reply to JesseB.

            I don't know if I missed something or Youtube changed the way they serve the ads but for some reason I see the ads after applying the block. Is this method still working for you?

            • 0 in reply to C F

              It's a possibility.  I'll investigate and see what I can find.

                  Jesse B.
                  Help up-vote the full support of QUIC in UTM's Web Filter!

              • 0 in reply to NashBrydges

                UTM blocks lots of ads for us, so  I have no complaints.  However, our usage is for business.  Home activities like gaming and video provide web developers with more tricks for inserting ads.

                • 0 in reply to JesseB.

                  Great, thanks!

                  • 0 in reply to DouglasFoster

                    I’d like to block youtube ads in my home network because of my 7 years old son who likes to watch cartoons on our smart TV. One problem is that in a 20 minutes long episode of Johnny Test there are about 10-15 ads on the average, but the bigger problem is that there are also inappropriate ones, a few weeks ago I saw myself an ad for the horror movie The Nun 2 o’clock in the afternoon in the middle of cartoon for children.

                    • 0 in reply to JesseB.

                      I think something may have changed on Youtube's ad thing, because I have this same solution going, and I am STILL getting ads from Youtube through the UTM (9.602-3).

                      OPNSense 64-bit | Intel Xeon 4-core v3 1225 3.20Ghz
                      16GB Memory | 500GB SSD HDD | ATT Fiber 1GB
                      (Former Sophos UTM Veteran, Former XG Rookie)

                      • 0 in reply to Amodin

                        The ads may be annoying, but do they represent an incremental security risk?

                        • 0 in reply to DouglasFoster

                          The answer to that is subjective, and potentially in the future?  Possibly so.  We've seen a lot of changes on how people use ads to get malware and whatnot into systems in very clever ways.

                          My main point wasn't about that though - mine was the applied filter listed above no longer works.

                          OPNSense 64-bit | Intel Xeon 4-core v3 1225 3.20Ghz
                          16GB Memory | 500GB SSD HDD | ATT Fiber 1GB
                          (Former Sophos UTM Veteran, Former XG Rookie)