Consider unblocking google-analytics.com

[Yuki2718]

Prerequisites

• I checked the documentation and found no answer;
• I checked to make sure that this issue has not already been filed;
• This is not an ad/bug report.

Problem description

@ameshkov commented in #1142 (comment)

Google Analytics and Qualtrics definitely won't be unblocked.

I guess I have to challenge this at least once as it's simply too problematic. For example, AdguardTeam/AdguardFilters#90357 alone, not resolved in DNS, has been wasting a lot of precious time of user, losing financial opportunity, and causing you to lose new user¹. There are more - this repo has around 10+ GA-related issues and TPF has 200+ exception, and today I found this can be solved if GA is unblocked on DNS without allowing in contents filtering. Note this is not only a matter of DNS user but also of those using DNS filtering on apps. As discussed in Slack in past, there will be many user who only want to block ads and not tracker, but those who want to block GA can still do with personal DNS or with any of client-side AG products. Privacy advocates will critisize you and me if it's done, but the qustion is the total utility of all user.

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1. Of note someone already asked paypay to solve the issue.

Proposed solution

Unblock GA in DNS

Additional information

No response

[Alex-302]

This kind of unlocking would make the DNS useless. User can always switch to a non-filtering server or to our free private DNS.

[Yuki2718]

No for those who wanna block ads and not tracker. We should consider maximizing net utility. The ideal solution will be separating DNS to ads-only and ads + tracker.

[ghost]

I suppose the same could be said about Google Ads which now breaks Google's partner ad settings interface.

Blocking these types of domains which breaks smaller services that aren't used as much I can understand, but when you have large scale applications being broken it may be time to look at improving the approach such as possibly splitting the AdGuard DNS filter into many smaller lists for more granular control.

[ameshkov]

Can we consider a different approach and report those breakages to website owners?

I highly doubt that breakage is the intended behaviour and I suppose that once they learn about the issue, they'll try to resolve it.

To do that, we need to know which websites & apps are affected.

[Yuki2718]

1. Of note someone already asked paypay to solve the issue.

That anyway doesn't work, even if a dev is honest and have fixed an issue, then next problem arises in another - this is all I have seen for years now and it was probably too late to open this issue. GA is that much problematic, it's not one or two sites/apps.

[ameshkov]

Let's try again, but with more details about why the breakage actually occurs.

We'll report it from our official Japanese account.

[ameshkov]

Let's wait and see if they fix it in the coming month: https://twitter.com/PayPaysupport/status/1658385834062774272

[Yuki2718]

BTW AdguardTeam/AdguardFilters#90357 was about jp.co.sej.app so the dev of the app must be informed: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.co.sej.app&hl=en_US

[Alex-302]

@Yuki2718 Any news about PayPay?)

[Yuki2718]

I myself don't use the app, but I haven't heard complaints lately. Maybe it's fixed, but am not sure.

[Yuki2718]

Apprently not: https://twitter.com/zarame2000/status/1682390696794423298

[Alex-302]

🤦🏻‍♂️

[Yuki2718]

Another https://twitter.com/Fairy_bowwow/status/1682366011184656385

[Yuki2718]

Here's a new case: https://twitter.com/_trh3210/status/1698369641637380155 This app doesn't start if www.google-analytics.com is blocked on DNS, while works fine if it's blocked only on contents filter.

[Alex-302]

Wrote to them.

[Yuki2718]

Two more recent cases
AdguardTeam/AdguardFilters#170371
AdguardTeam/AdguardFilters#171066 (comment)
Though user didn't report breakage in 171066, I see total breakage (unable to launch the app) if ga is blocked on DNS.

[DandelionSprout]

Privacy lists, and by extension in this case privacy entries, tend to be broken comparatively often, so I side with OP on this one.