Emergency playbook

DataUnlocker, once properly installed, is a runtime dependency of your web application. Learn more on how it works here or continue to read to understand what to do in case of fire.

Traffic flow

DataUnlocker is a proxy that sits between your web application and the network. It intercepts and processes network requests, and then forwards them to the destination.

The most critical part of the setup is your own proxy server, which is required for DataUnlocker installation.

Most of our customers use Cloudflare as a proxy server, which removes all maintenance problems and guarantees fastest requests delivery. If you're not using Cloudflare or any other cloud CDN, you should ensure that your proxy server is properly configured and maintained.

Troubleshooting

In case you observe DataUnlocker Defender's Limited Mode Screen, do the following:

1. Try to open your website in a private or incognito mode without VPN or ad blocker software. If it opens,
   • Ad blocking community may have accidentally rolled out a rule breaking your website. Don't worry, as your users without ad blocker don't see this message. Report this issue to DataUnlocker if you feel we can help.
   • If the issue is not related to filter rules affecting the setup, report this issue to DataUnlocker.

If the issue still persists, continue investigating:

2. Check the network tab in your browser's developer tools to see if any of the requests are failing.
3. Typically, you may find a blocked request like https://yourwebsite.com/abcdefg/hijklmno*.
   • If you don't see any blocked requests, check the console tab for any errors.
4. Append /health-check to the transport endpoint's URL prefix to check whether it actually reaches DataUnlocker's servers.
   • For path-based transport endpoints: https://example.com/abcdefg/health-check.
   • For DNS-based transport endpoints: https://abcdefg.example.com/health-check.
5. If you don't see the health check response (a valid JSON body),
   • The problem might be in your own proxy server. Investigate your proxy further.
   • Check DataUnlocker's status page to see if there are any ongoing incidents on the proxy side.

If you see the health check response, check DataUnlocker Defender's Limited Mode codes, they may explain what's the issue.

Disabling Defender

In order to disable DataUnlocker to further investigate the issue (for instance, in dev environment or on the specific test page of your website), you'd need to perform a new front end deployment.

Typically, DataUnlocker Defender is installed via CLI which wires Defender's code with one of JavaScript files of your web application. This can be set up as a code patching JavaScript files in the deployment pipeline, a patched file locally or abstracted by a package. You need to find out how DataUnlocker Defender was installed and do the reverse operation.

For instance if the Defender was installed via CLI to a file locally, you'd need to find the patched file example.js, delete it and replace it with the original file example.js.abcdefg.backup, typically located just next to the file.

Then, you can debug the issue by enabling Defender just on a single (or test) page of your website (by patching any JS file served only on that page), or in the test environment.