EasyList Forum

I've been using EasyList for ABP for years.
However about 95 % of the filters on the list never generate a single hit.
I never visit those (mostly foreign) sites.
I'd like to remove all but the relevant 5% of filters.

How do I do that ?
Unchecking thousands of boxes is not very efficient.
Are there any other ways ?
Thanks

easyuser wrote: ↑Sat Dec 02, 2017 6:45 pm How do I do that ?
Unchecking thousands of boxes is not very efficient.
Are there any other ways ?
Thanks

Yes create your own list like I did.

I'd like to remove all but the relevant 5% of filters.

Unsubscribe to Easylist and use your own list, that's the only way.

Create your own list https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic ... 93#p144193

Adblock has an abbreviated lists called Easylist Lite. It's compiled from stats from users and is about half the size of the original Easylist.
http://cdn.adblock.cdn.com/filters/easylist_lite.txt

Noob question: some of the blacklisted domains in EasyList have very unmemorable names (like 1f7wwaex9rbh.com, or better yet, 102320fef81194c7b0c7c6bbe64d845d.com). They kind of look like throwaway domains, to avoid wasting a better-known (or more expensive) domain.

Would it worthwhile to do a WHOIS lookup on those domains, check which of them are long expired (e.g. six months ago) and remove the filters corresponding to those domains? (Or move them to a supplementary list, like "Easylist Deprecated", just so the information is not lost.)

Or is this a bad idea? (And if so, why?)

I don't disagree with that, but you also have to keep in mind is someone can just de-register (let it lapse) a domain to get off the list and register it again a few months later and nobody would know it. Unless everyone subscribes to the deprecated list. In which case EasyList isn't really getting shorter.

hey that would be a nice feature to do a filter purge of expired domains whenever you chose to do so or when you are adding a filter via adb or ublock or whatever plugin you use.

Lanik wrote: ↑Mon Dec 10, 2018 8:38 pm I don't disagree with that, but you also have to keep in mind is someone can just de-register (let it lapse) a domain to get off the list and register it again a few months later and nobody would know it. Unless everyone subscribes to the deprecated list. In which case EasyList isn't really getting shorter.

That's certainly a risk, but a typical user browser wouldn't go direcly to those domains. They are mostly meant to filter third-party requests, and the only sites that would import resources from re-registered domains are their close affiliates... which will have a well-established domain that's already half-blacklisted in EasyList (like powvideo.net). And EasyList blocks... basically every single third-party request coming from those.

I get that those scripts could appear in a lesser-known domain, or in a random link in a random social platform, and the average user... would fall for those, actually. So, I have an alternative approach:

You could move those filters to a separate list and convert it to a hosts file (0.0.0.0 shady5h1t.bid) or a plain domains list (shady5h1t.bid, no || or ^). Then, instead of calling that list "EasyList Deprecated", you call it "Easylist Domain List", and advise people to use it unless they "really know what they're doing".

True, it wouldn't get any shorter for the most part of people, but people who are somewhat security-savvy, or:

• also use DNS-based or hosts-based blocking, or
• use Google's Fraudulent Sites system (forgot its name), or
• just block any and all 3rd party requests by default

could benefit from that, and their blockers should go faster. Probably not me, I'm constantly finding a happy balance between security and convenience, but somebody.

Arana wrote: ↑Mon Dec 10, 2018 11:15 pm hey that would be a nice feature to do a filter purge of expired domains whenever you chose to do so or when you are adding a filter via adb or ublock or whatever plugin you use.

I doubt that's feasible... as far as I know, to check for expired domains, you have to ask an internet registry for every single domain, and read several lines of text (and answers don't follow a fixed format). And if you make too many requests in a short time, the internet registry probably will not reply to you.