Add and remove values in User Profile criteria

I was asked by a customer to add "Country" to User Profile criteria as it was not in the dropdown list.

User Profile dropdown list

I haven't used Visitor Groups before and was a bit surprised that that the values in the dropdown list were shorter than expected. I thought the list was populated from Personalization in EPiServer and could be configured in SqlProfile in web.config. 

profile section i web.config

Just to be sure I added a value to SqlProfile and it appeared in the dropdown list after a reload. So my first thought was right, but what had happened with the removed values? I now suspected that EPiServer for some reason or another had chosen to filter the list. Loading up episerver.dll in dotPeek revealed the truth. In the initializing code the class added an ignore list and the missing values where added to the ignore list. The next question was how to enable those values. After contact with EPiServer support they provided me with an easy way to control the ignore list.

The way to do it is to call the criterion in global.asax.cs, I used application_start. Here are some examples:

1. To remove all values in the list, e.g. show all values:
protected void Application_Start(Object sender, EventArgs e)
{          EPiServer.Personalization.VisitorGroups.Criteria.UserProfileCriterion.IgnoreUserProfileProperties.Clear();
        }

2. To remove a specific value, e.g. show "Country":
protected void Application_Start(Object sender, EventArgs e)
{            EPiServer.Personalization.VisitorGroups.Criteria.UserProfileCriterion.IgnoreUserProfileProperties.Remove("Country");
        }

3. To add a specific value, e.g. hide "FirstName":

protected void Application_Start(Object sender, EventArgs e)
{            EPiServer.Personalization.VisitorGroups.Criteria.UserProfileCriterion.IgnoreUserProfileProperties.Add("FirstName");
        }
This should be useful for hiding the values that make no sense for creating Visitor Groups, just as EPiServer did with their default values. Although I think they probably removed some useful values, like "Country".

The complete list of default properties are:

    IgnoreUserProfileProperties.Add("SubscriptionInfo");
    IgnoreUserProfileProperties.Add("CustomExplorerTreePanel");
    IgnoreUserProfileProperties.Add("FileManagerFavourites");
    IgnoreUserProfileProperties.Add("EditTreeSettings");
    IgnoreUserProfileProperties.Add("ClientToolsActivationKey");
    IgnoreUserProfileProperties.Add("FrameworkName");
    IgnoreUserProfileProperties.Add("ZipCode");
    IgnoreUserProfileProperties.Add("Locality");
    IgnoreUserProfileProperties.Add("Language");
    IgnoreUserProfileProperties.Add("Country");