@Leo I’ve been using pocket casts forever and never had issues before but today for both Mac Break and SN I get an error saying “The cert for this server is invalid”. I don’t think I’ve changed anything anywhere in my network or on my phone. Currently on iOS.
Not sure what’s going on, but our DNS provider did have an outage on Wednesday. I’ll keep an eye on it. Let me know if it doesn’t clear up soon.
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@leo I think I found my issue. I use pfBlocker on my pfSense router and it is reporting that it blocked an attempt to access chtbl.com when I try to play or download an episode. And in fact if I switch my phone over to cell it works. I’m not sure when or why this started, I certainly have not changed anything on my network. Is chtbl.com something you guys use or would you know if it is Pocket Casts.
Just to be clear I have no issue allowing it if it somehow helps you. It sure seems like I will have to whitelist it to continue accessing episodes which I completely intend to. Just a very sudden and strange change all of a sudden.
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Hi @pinter , take a look at this thread:
https://www.twit.community/t/how-are-ads-inserted-into-my-podcast-feed/9518/8
TWiT has been slowly switching audio shows to Megaphone, who insert ads into slots that haven’t been sold directly by TWiT and chtbl to track the downloads.
I had the same problem a while back. I have a PiHole with some 2.5 million blocked tracking and malware domains. I ended up whitelisting chtbl and megaphone, so that I could download the podcasts - as I only download TWiT podcasts and these domains are only used for podcast tracking, I white listed them for TWiT’s sake.
I wish @Leo and TWiT would put up an FAQ about this, either pinned here in the forums or on their main site as this issue seems to crop up every couple of weeks.
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Thanks! Finally, got TWiT to download. Found I only had to add chtbl.com to my pi-hole whitelist.
I hope it does cause other things to be let through now, though. Such a shame TWiT has to go down this road.
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I don’t think it’s a shame at all. If all it’s doing is tracking downloads it’s all good. I’m kind of surprised TWIT can keep producing such awesome shows for free tbh. Whatever helps I’m fine with it.
I do expect a pay model to pop up soon, I would pay some amount.
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The problem is we don’t know what they are doing now. Using a tracker that is on a blacklist raises alarm bells. @Leo needs to detail exactly how we are tracked and not keep saying that we don’t track our users.
Ah, this explains why I got errors trying to download at home this morning. I will have to chtbl.com to my pi-hole allow list as well.
Like many podcasts we redirect through several services for download measurements and ad tracking. It looks like one of these services has been added to your ad blocker list.
To continue freely downloading our shows, you’ll need to whitelist the following URLs in your ad blocker:
twit.tv (TWiT)
chtbl.com (Chartable)
pdst.fm (Podsights)
megaphone.fm (Megaphone)
Sorry for the bother. This is something we have to do for our survival as a free podcast - the good news is that neither we nor these services are doing anything other than recording your IP address. They are fully GDPR and California Privacy Act compliant.
This, unfortunately, is what’s required these days to sell advertising. We could look at an ad-free version if there’s enough demand for it. You’d have to pay for it, though!
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Twit has always had our best interest in mind and I trust they still do. Beyond that nothing is certain and if you’re online you’re tracked somehow no matter what.
Pi-hole updated, will know latter this week if it worked when I download SN.
Just to let you all know, and @Leo, i just noticed the chtbl.com problem today. I’ve been on NextDNS for months, so I think someone recently added chtbl.com to block lists. Seems to have effected people using Pi Hole, NextDNS, and AdGuard… Also blocking Apple Podcasts, so this will probably get “fixed” by the block lists.
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Fully understand the commercial imperative but I find it a bit ironic given how anti-tracking you and Steve are on Security Now…
Thank you @Leo! Was not able to connect on Monday to listen to the latest show, as I needed to allow these domains in PiHole.
I accepted all of the domains that @Leo listed. Windows Weekly and TWiG worked for a couple of weeks, but the last 2 episodes have failed again.
TWiT downloaded without errors, as it did last week.
Security Now also downloaded last week without errors.
There is something dodgy about the way WW and TWiG are being downloaded.
That’s just a sign about windows and android 
WW and TWiG failed again today. I was sitting in front of my PC when I tried TWiG and looked at the Pi-Hole logs as I was trying to download.
Megaphone has moved over to “traffic.megaphone.fm” for its downloads, I had previously whitelisted megaphone.fm, but they have now pushed it over to a sub-domain.
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