Gripes about AdSubtract

Out of the Box Experiences with AdSubtract

April 1, 2001. I installed AdSubtract SE 1.68 from interMute Inc. today on a computer running Windows NT4 SP6. This is the current version of the product and it is dated October 4,2000. There are three versions of AdSubtract, the SE version is the low-end freebie. The other two versions have more features and are not free.

Installation Issues

The installation was straight forward. Too much so. The product includes a readme file that the installation program does not mention at all.

AdSubtract installs itself such that it automatically runs at start-up time. Nowhere in the installation process does it mention this or give the user an option for it not to run automatically. Fortunately it added itself to the Startup folder, from which it is very easy to delete.

The first time I ran AdSubtract, my personal firewall program, ZoneAlarm, asked if it was okay to allow AdSubtract to act as a server. The correct answer is yes, but the gripe is that a user not aware of the fact that AdSubtract is a proxy server and understanding what proxy servers do, would not have known how to answer this question. Neither the install process nor the readme file mention that a firewall might ask this question which any good firewall should ask about.

The FAQ at the tech support section of the AdSubtract web site discusses ZoneAlarm. However the information, dated October 25, 2000, is old and wrong. It refers to the "latest" version of ZoneAlarm as 2.026. There was no such version, but there was a 2.0.26 which dates to about February 2000. The FAQ said that ZoneAlarm would ask whether to allow AdSubtract to access the Internet. I was not asked this with ZoneAlarm v2.1.25, but instead (see above) was asked about AdSubtract acting as a server.

Using AdSubtract

AdSubtract blocks ads and cookies. I am not concerned with cookie blocking. AdSubtract can block ads with multiple web browsers. I told it block ads for Internet Explorer, but not block ads for Netscape Navigator. The machine in question is running IE version 5.01 with Service Pack 2.

The AdSubtract user interface is referred to as the "Control Panel" which I think is unnecessarily confusing with the Windows control panel.

The user interface has a section for statistics that purport to show what AdSubtract has blocked in the current session. I have not seen it report that it blocked anything so far.

There is a button in the user interface called "Check for Updates" that checks both for updates to AdSubtract itself and also for updates to its ad-blocking database. Clicking on it took me to www.adsubtract.com/se/update/update_upd.html This page said:

You are not currently running AdSubtract Standard Edition (SE).

This is not true, I am running AdSubtract SE. Then the web page tells me to do what I just did.

For free ad database updates, please visit the Updates tab of the AdSubtract
Control Panel and select Check for Updates.

Now I have a problem. I go to the tech support web page and looked for all SE version 1.68 update related questions. There were none. I tried to ask a question, but the web page asks for my userid. What userid? There is no place to sign up and no explanation of what I have to sign up for.

The readme file says that you can request technical support by sending e-mail to support@adsubtract.com. I opted for that and sent them an email April 2,2001 about why their web site did not detect the presence of their software. They responded quickly and said to re-install the product. Knowing this to be a knee jerk reaction akin to take 2 aspirin and call me in the morning, I won't bother.

My Ad Blocking Experiences

The first web site I went to with AdSubtract running was my.yahoo.com. It did not the block banner ad.
Then I tried an E! Online story at my.yahoo.com -- all the ads appeared.
At www.excite.com it blocked the Excite logo.
At www.zdnet.com/anchordesk it did not block the banner ad
It failed to block ads at mail.yahoo.com which is one of its pre-configured web sites
The banner ad at www.altavista.com was also not blocked.

Seeing all these ads, combined with the problem of the web site not realizing I was running the software, combined with the fact that the statistics never said it blocked any ads, made me test whether AdSubtract was working at all. It wasn't. A web page from Yahoo http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Reference/ is a perfect example. Viewing this page in IE and Navigator produced identical looking pages, both with a banner ad. AdSubtract is configured to block ads when using IE and not block them when using Navigator. It is not blocking ads with IE. I deleted the web browser cache, but this had no noticeable effect.

The bottom line: it does not block ads.

I then went to www.adsubtract.com and clicked on the link for technical support (April 3, 2001). Instead of technical support, I got the following errors from this page http://www15.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/adsubtract/

SQL Error

File:	qual.c
Line:	188
In Fcn.:	get_interface_id
SQL Fcn.:	sql_Query() returned -1
SQL Stmt.:	SELECT interface_id FROM interfaces WHERE name = 'adsubtract'
SQL Error:	Table 'adsubtract.interfaces' doesn't exist

If you have not done so, initialize your database with: dbaudit -c interface

Perhaps AdSubtract does not recognize IE because this is a very new version of IE5 and AdSubtract is about 6 months old? To test this theory, I changed the browser configuration for AdSubtract and told it to filter ads from Netscape Navigator version 4 and not to filter ads from Internet Explorer.

This works.

With Navigator running, I tried the "Check for updates" function (a button in the user interface). This takes you to a web page that detected my ad database was old. Clicking on a button to update my ad database resulted in no obvious action. Under IE on another machine (see below) AdSubtract popped up a window when the ad database was refreshed. A minute later, clicking again on the button to update the ad database, reloaded the web page with a message that my ad database was current. It had worked, it just didn't provide any feedback. Later, when I shut down Navigator, there were two messages from AdSubtract that it had downloaded a new ad database. Somehow they were covered up.

I emailed the vendor (April 3, 2001), interMute, to inform them that it does not seem to work with IE 5.01 SP2. As before, they responded very quickly (next day) and with a personalized response, not a canned, automated reply. The response provided instructions to verify that AdSubtract had indeed set itself up as an HTTP proxy server with IE. The instructions were accurate and easy to follow and I did find a problem with the configuration.

Dial-up networking provides for multiple entries and AdSubtract needs to modify each entry to use AdSubtract as an HTTP proxy server. In my case, it did not modify each entry and had not modified the specific entry I was using at the time. Even the entries that it did modify to use an HTTP proxy server, were not modified correctly. The address of the proxy server was "AdSubtract" when it should have been "127.0.0.1".

I manually configured the dial-up connection entry (Tools -> Internet Options -> Connections Tab) that I was currently using and restarted IE. This fixed the problem.

FYI: AdSubtract is supposed to be an HTTP proxy server and nothing more. When I first modified the settings manually, IE had set up AdSubtract as a proxy server for FTP, Socks and a few other protocols. This is wrong and required a second go-round at manually configuring IE.

More Problems

April 5, 2001. I thought I was done. Everything was working fine after manually configuring IE5 to use AdSubtract. But no. Today I logged on to the Internet and IE5 could not load any web pages at all. The reason was that AdSubtract was not running. Because of the manual configuration of IE5, I am now dependent on AdSubtract. Without it, IE5 is looking for an HTTP proxy server that is not there and won't read any web pages.

April 13, 2001. For whatever reason, all is now well on the same computer that caused the above problems. IE5 now works with and without AdSubtract. Somehow, the manual configuration that was previously done is gone. The address of the proxy server is no longer "127.0.0.1" but has reverted back to "AdSubtract". All five dial-up settings are being changed by AdSubtract.

New Install on Windows 98

April 4, 2001. Today I downloaded and installed AdSubtract SE v1.68 on a computer running Windows 98 Second Edition. The machine also had ZoneAlarm version 2.1.44 and an old copy of IE version 5, the one that shipped with Windows 98SE.

As on the other machine, when I start AdSubtract with ZoneAlarm running, ZoneAlarm asks if I want to allow AdSubtract to act as a server. I said yes. Again, there was no warning about this from AdSubtract.

Everything basically worked. Ads were blocked and stats were generated. ZoneAlarm asked, at first use, whether to allow AdSubtract to access the Internet. The fact that this would happen, is not however mentioned in the readme file for AdSubtract, but it is in the FAQ on their web site.

One minor gripe is that if you forget to start up AdSubtract at first, when it does start up, it shuts down your web browser. It will also shut down Netscape Messenger, even if Navigator is not running. The documentation however, does say to expect this. Still, it would be nice if the product asked about this beforehand. On the other computer (see above) it does warn and ask the user, if you try to shut down AdSubtract while a web browser is running.

My only real gripe is with the "Check for Updates" function. It worked fine. The web page it takes you to detected the version of AdSubtract I was using and said that my ad database was expired. I had just downloaded the product. The vendor should not provide the product with an old ad database.

Port in Use Error on Startup

April 16, 2001. I was logged on to the Internet with ZoneAlarm v2.1.25 running on an NT4 SP6 computer. Internet Explorer 5.01 SP2 was running. I tried to start AdSubtract. The result was:

In response to this, I shut down IE5 and my email program, then started AdSubtract again. Same error. A couple days later, I also got this error while not even logged on to the Internet. IE5, ZoneAlarm and my email program were running at the time AdSubtract was started.

May 17, 2001. Another instance of the same Port in Use error shown above. Machine is NT4 at SP6a and had run ZoneAlarm 2.6 and AdSubtract and dialed onto the internet previously. With no internet applications running, I started ZoneAlarm and AdSubtract again, but this time AdSubtract failed to start up. Perhaps it never cleaned up correctly after being shut down previously. The real annoying thing about this error is that it shuts down AdSubtract and to fix it you have to have AdSubtract running to configure it to use another port.

May 23, 2001. These seems to be a consistent problem, not a fluke. It happens any time AdSubtract is started after having been used previously (started and stopped with no problems) without re-booting NT4 in between.

Shutdown Warning

May 11, 2001. AdSubtract SE v1.68 on an NT4 machine.
After shutting down Netscape 4.72 and IE5 and ZoneAlarm 2.6, then I shut down AdSubtract. It issued the following error.

This may be a Netscape problem. The NT Task Manager showed a copy of netscape.exe was still running, despite the fact that I had shut it down.

Checking for Updates

May 14, 2001. I tried to check for updates by clicking on the Check for Updates button on the Update tab. It took me to www.adsubtract.com/se/update/update_upd.html where the following error was displayed:
Network error. Unable to request URL from host www.adsubtract.com:80: Host unreachable

Shutting Down AdSubtract

May 23, 2001. AdSubtract SE v1.68 Windows NT4 SP6a.
Sometimes when AdSubtract shuts down while a web browser is running, it warns about having to close the web browser to re-configure it not to use AdSubtract. Yesterday when I got this warning, I told AdSubtract to go ahead and close the web browser as part of its shutdown process. It didn't. Today, with three instances of IE5 running, I shut down AdSubtract and it said nothing about closing the web browser. AdSubtract shut down and left the browsers running.

Other Gripers

October 23, 2003. A reader of this site who designs web sites himself says that a graphic on one of his web sites could not be seen by a client. The name was ad_logo_dt.gif The “ad” was for “advanced” but it seems that AdSubtract thought it was a banner. When he changed the name of the graphic to dtlogo.gif it was visible. I have not verified this.

Page created: April 2001	Page last updated: October 25, 2003
Prior updates:

AdSubtract Gripes