AdTrap removes ads between your modem and router

This is actually a really interesting product, but there are very few details. My big concern is one of trust - if I'm going to literally route all my network traffic through this device, how can I trust that it's not doing something nefarious? Also, what kind of performance does this device offer? Given that it's inspecting every connection, this might put a limit on the throughput it can provide and/or add additional latency. Also, how transparent is it to the network? Does it do its own version of NAT or does it just passively inspect the traffic that passes through?

Interesting.<p>Would love to see how they work on picking adverts out of SSL pages.<p>Would also love to see how they deal with tracking and affiliates stuff in addition to banner adverts.<p>That latter one is an issue for me, I've found some sites to be simply unusable if AdBlock or Ghostery is running in my browser.<p>It's usually tracking code (LinkedIn Inbox is useless to me as are sites that add Omniture to their shop button), and occasionally I go to buy something which is an affiliate link and it gets treated as an advert click and stopped.<p>So it's important not to go too far and break the internet either (though in my view it is the sites that add all this stuff that are breaking it).<p>If this stuff is all in a black box without external configuration... then how do you correct the false positives?

No ads on the Internet? Seriously, how do you think the economy would work without ads? If everyone got one of these, I could tell my boss on monday to close the company.

Interesting to do this in hardware, as it will work for all devices on your network: also tablets and so on. However, I wonder how many people have separate modems and routers: Most providers (here at least) have modem/wifi AP combo's, which makes it impossible to put this in between.<p>Also, I wonder if some sites will stop working: e.g. I can imagine a video with a pre-roll just never starting, when the pre-roll can't be loaded. And it being hardware, this will be harder to skip.

So this is a bridge-mode transparent HTTP proxy with Privoxy running on it? [Or the equivalent thereof?]<p>Or does it do an SSL MITM attack on all your traffic?<p>The former is interesting mostly because it doesn't require end-user configuration, so to a naive user it really is plug-it-in-and-works. The latter is, as several have now pointed out, horrendously awful.<p>What nobody seems to have mentioned yet, though, is that you can turn the first into the second with a code update.

I m confused how this is implemented. First of all only as a proxy it can intervene ssl traffic. Without monthly fees how will they keep updating the ad detection for diverse types of ads from text, image to video.

I am willing to see ads in return for the free services I get. I get free TV shows without cable and free movies on Youtube. Really, what business model does this kickstarter project advocate?

Interesting idea. If it screws up and blocks the wrong thing, I can imagine it would be hell to troubleshoot.

Invariably the device will have security vulnerabilities. The potential man-in-the-middle access this thing will afford an attacker would be a treasure-trove, especially if it has SSL bump-in-the-wire functionality.

We're all pretty sold on the idea that ads are a bad thing, but would we rather pay for all of the content that is ad-supported?

What will prevent modem/router manufacturers from embedding an ad-filtering proxy into their devices (ie, eroding the need for a specialized AdTrap)?

I wonder what approach they'll take to advertise this product to the public.

Could you just do this with a raspberry pi and at a much cheaper cost ?