I have been testing the sites listed for over 6 years over that time; What I've found is about 2/3rds of the restricted sites are either parked down or simply do not exist anymore. Over the years of using SB i've noticed that the lists does change but the ones that are unknown or none existence are still listed How do i test these .. I try to get an ip address for the domain name example 008i.com will not resolve 008k.com intermittenly resolves to an ip address Thoughts?
I've honestly stopped using SpywareBlaster for this exact reason, and the fact the Google Chrome protection is limited to cookies which my adblockers never allow in the first place... I'm more surprised that this still works on Windows 10 than anything else. Well not Edge, but yeah...
Hi kachupp, Restricted Sites lists are evaluated and pruned as we can prove they are no longer used. However, as you noted, this is sometimes more difficult than simply trying to resolve an IP address. Some sites use fake parking / suspended pages to look like they are no longer in operation (but still continue to serve malware/exploit kits if you know the proper subdomain / URL). Some sites block connections from anything that doesn't look like an exploitable browser, or certain geographic locations. Some sites only resolve some of the time (down for weeks, and then up again for several days). And numerous other techniques are used to try to deceive people investigating the sites. As always, this is an area we try to improve in, but it's a never-solved problem. Generally, we choose to err on the side of caution. And since there is essentially zero perceivable performance impact to using the list, we think this is the right place to be. (Also, Google Chrome protection offers Script protection as well.)
