Help configuring Symantec NIS ad blocking - tech support is worthless

From: Fred Elbel (frelbel@nospam.csn.net.deletethispart)
Date: 04/17/02 

From: Fred Elbel <frelbel@nospam.csn.net.deletethispart>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 16:47:26 GMT

Hi, folks:

Re: Norton Internet Security 2002 ad blocking -
       tech support is worthless and documentation is nonexistent

I've been engaged in a discussion with tech support for several weeks
now on their tech support forum. After several frustrating exchanges
they abruptly said the discussion had been occurring on the wrong
forum and that I should start from scratch on a new forum. So I did.

After numerous subsequent exchanges, it is quite clear that Symantec
has no idea how their ad blocking product works (which I understand
they bought from a third party). And now they want me to pay for
"training" because tech support is clueless! This is, to say the
least, unacceptable.

I would like to ask if anyone has experimented enough with NIS ad
blocking so that they can answer my fundamental question. Here it is:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

The issue at hand is legal syntax and parsing and pattern matching of
the supplied string. Support has implied by previous responses that
standard DOS-type wildcard pattern matching is legal. Support also
said that the string
h t t p : / / gs.cdnow.com/MN/client.banners is allowed. Now here's
the crucial question (ignore any issue of URL redirection):

** Given that I would like to block the gif image
** h t t p : / / gs.cdnow.com/MN/client.banners/ad.gif
** Specifically, which of the the following strings will block it and
which will not?
** h t t p : / / gs.cdnow.com/MN/client.banners
** h t t p : / / gs.cdnow.com/MN/client.banners/
** h t t p : / / gs.cdnow.com/MN/client.banners/*.*
** h t t p : / / gs.cdnow.com/MN
** h t t p : / / gs.cdnow.com/MN/
** h t t p : / / gs.cdnow.com/MN/*.*
(spaces were inserted in URLs so that the Symantec forum would not
interpret them as hyperlinks)

A yes or no to each example would be most helpful.

For example, if the string h t t p : / / gs.cdnow.com/MN will block
the ad, then the pattern matching algorithm is straight string
comparison for the length of the string (with the understanding that
wild cards, if present, would embellish the pattern matching). If this
string will not block the ad, then the pattern matching algorithm is
probably *only* DOS-type wildcard pattern matching. In this case, the
string h t t p : / / gs.cdnow.com/MN/*.* would be required to block
the ad.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Has *anyone* had success dealing with Symantec tech support,
especially concerning ad blocking?

Any knowledge you could share would be greatly appreciated.

Finally, can anyone recomend a well-documented and fully-functional ad
blocking utility that I could use to replace Symantec's?

Thanks in advance,

Fred Elbel

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