Hosts: CNAME issues

[llacb47]

Hi, there are some CNAMEs included in your list causing breakages/false positives.

Related: https://github.com/lightswitch05/hosts/issues/132 (I encountered this as well)

dualstack.brightcove.map.fastly.net is CNAME of manifest.prod.boltdns.net
dualstack.us-eu.brightcove.map.fastly.net is CNAME of house-fastly-signed-eu-west-1-prod.brightcovecdn.com
brightcove.map.fastly.net is CNAME of f1.media.brightcove.com

cloudenhanced.qualtrics.com.edgekey.net is CNAME of google.qualtrics.com, education.co1.qualtrics.com, etc.

[lightswitch05]

I'm good with removing the the brightcove ones. But to me, it looks like the qualtrics.com blocks is valid. Can you explain to me what is wrong with blocking it?

[llacb47]

Voluntary surveys/forms:
https://google.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3eNnjG89r4ObBfn
https://education.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1B9R7XJa9dXaQBv
https://fandango.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cGSHgMIu5ivVwAB?Q_JFE=qdg

You already block Qualtrics site intercept: https://techcrunch.com/2012/08/07/qualtrics-site-intercept-a-real-time-intelligence-service-from-a-family-run-business-with-70-million-in-funding/
siteintercept.qprod2.net (blocked) is CNAME of zn2t6mdnujruus8jh-inc.siteintercept.qualtrics.com, zn4onyivptbyoszsh-bmo.siteintercept.qualtrics.com, etc.

[lightswitch05]

I removed *.brightcove.map.fastly.net and *.marfeelcdn.com.

qualtrics.com does a lot of tracking on a lot of websites as a 3rd party. I think this one is going to have to be an opt-in deal where you need to whitelist it on your side if you want to fill out the survey. We can leave the ticket open for a while to see if anyone else wants to add their opinion.

[ACMEd]

Recently, I also had to fill out a form which was on a *.qualtrics.com sub domain.
Is there any evidence that these subdomains serve 3rd party tracking?

[lightswitch05]

Yes, there is a LOT of evidence of that: https://publicwww.com/websites/%22siteintercept.qualtrics.com%22/

[lightswitch05]

Perhaps I will leave the siteintercept junk in the main list and move the other domains to the aggressive list. They are certainly a well known 3rd party tracker.

[ACMEd]

What I mean is, is there any evidence that the subdomains _which are used for forms_ serve 3rd party tracking? For example, *.az1.qualtrics.com appears to only be used for forms, not for serving content in the third party.
https://publicwww.com/websites/%22az1.qualtrics.com%22/
Of course, this means figuring out which subdomains aren't used for this purpose.

[lightswitch05]

Moved all qualtrics domains that don't match '*siteintercept.qualtrics.com' to the aggressive list.

[llacb47]

Moved all qualtrics domains that don't match '*siteintercept.qualtrics.com' to the aggressive list.

Awesome, thank you.

[ler762]

Moved all qualtrics domains that don't match ...

siteintercept.qualtrics.com sites are in both the normal and aggressive lists:

$ grep 'siteintercept.qualtrics.com$' ads-and-tracking-extended.txt | wc -l
694

$ grep 'siteintercept.qualtrics.com$' tracking-aggressive-extended.txt | wc -l
694

[lightswitch05]

Ok fair enough, what I said wasn’t 100% correct. What I actually did was move all the domains to the aggressive list- and then cloned the siteintercept ones back to the main list. The aggressive list and the primary lists are completely different lists, I don’t try to manage duplicates between them as that would take way too much work.

[ler762]

Ok fair enough, what I said wasn’t 100% correct. What I actually did was
move all the domains to the aggressive list- and then cloned the
siteintercept ones back to the main list.

Are the normal and aggressive lists supposed to be unique?
In other words, if I'm using both lists do I need to de-duplicate when
combining them?

[lightswitch05]

@ler762 if you are using the list with a Pihole, then it is de-duping it for you, no need for you to do anything else.

[ler762]

@ler762 if you are using the list with a Pihole, then it is de-duping it for
you, no need for you to do anything else.

Nope - using the list with privoxy, so I need to de-dup everything myself.

[lightswitch05]

That sucks. Follow #191, I’ll see what I can do.

[ler762]

That sucks. Follow #191, I’ll see what I can do.

Thank you! I was wondering how to tell if a host belonged in the
normal or aggressive list..