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Optimal DNS Ad Blocker

optimal.com

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Re: Optimal DNS Ad Blocker

#81

Getting rid of ads in exchange for letting an additional third party know all my Web-surfing respective DNS-lookups? Not sure which one is worse ..?

Well... what DNS are you currently using now? Isn't a 3rd party? I had 8.8.8.8 so I guess the switch is no-brainer

In fact, I have my own DNS server running ;)

But if I had not:

- My ISP whose DNS I used, is subject to strong regulations and laws here

- "Additional" 3rd parties are more out of control from this perspective, therefore a significant higher risk, imho

I agree, when you used google DNS before, it's same same...

Re: Optimal DNS Ad Blocker

#82
post #56

You can use use OpenDNS and turn on filtering of the "Advertising" category. https://community.opendns.com/domaintagging/?category_id=53 Protip: Doing this at the DNS and not the browser level leads to lots of brokenness. (Like when you try to sign into an app on your Roku/FireTV and it hangs on a Google Analytics event).

One significant benefit of OpenDNS is you can go whitelist a site/domain from filtering if it's breaking something and they have more categories than just 'Advertising'. I use it to help protect myself and my children from pornography.

Re: Optimal DNS Ad Blocker

#83
post #56

You can use use OpenDNS and turn on filtering of the "Advertising" category. https://community.opendns.com/domaintagging/?category_id=53 Protip: Doing this at the DNS and not the browser level leads to lots of brokenness. (Like when you try to sign into an app on your Roku/FireTV and it hangs on a Google Analytics event).

I'd like to setup an add-blocking service, but I fear that I'll spend all my time admin-ing/whitelisting sites when a family member has a broken web experience. Is this an inevitability based on the nature of things?

Re: Optimal DNS Ad Blocker

#86

Say everyone in the world started using this today: what solution would Google need to use to deliver ads to get around DNS blocks?

Google could use the same domain for advertising or use IP addresses instead of domain names.

How would they verifiably record the adds served, say on my example.org page the ads come from example.org too how can Adsupplier Inc. then be sure I served those ads to a genuine page-requester?

Re: Optimal DNS Ad Blocker

#87
post #56

You can use use OpenDNS and turn on filtering of the "Advertising" category. https://community.opendns.com/domaintagging/?category_id=53 Protip: Doing this at the DNS and not the browser level leads to lots of brokenness. (Like when you try to sign into an app on your Roku/FireTV and it hangs on a Google Analytics event).

One significant benefit of OpenDNS is you can go whitelist a site/domain from filtering if it's breaking something and they have more categories than just 'Advertising'. I use it to help protect myself and my children from pornography.

I use opendns, the black/white-listing is a bit unrefined IMO, it does work though. The limit on the list length is quite tight on the free tier too.

Re: Optimal DNS Ad Blocker

#89
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi I'm the CEO of Optimal, Rob. We use open source lists of adservers but have had to evolve from those lists since some of them are invalid or overly aggressive. We do not and will never make decisions about what to block based on being paid by any of these companies. We are building a consumer filtering system, and we are responsible to consumers. If you try it out and find any sites that don't work as intended ple…

@optimalrob Great work in simplifying ad blocking for all devices. Question, is Optimal working on an option to block adult content as well? OpenDNS Family Shield does an excellent job of this currently for home and school networks. We use it and dnsmasq to block all of the major ad networks. Good luck!

Open to it - I am very concerned about explicit ads being targeted to kids, but also sites that are not safe for kids. I think we would more likely look to partner with someone who is expert on the family side and they could utilize our ads expertise.

Re: Optimal DNS Ad Blocker

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi I'm the CEO of Optimal, Rob. We use open source lists of adservers but have had to evolve from those lists since some of them are invalid or overly aggressive. We do not and will never make decisions about what to block based on being paid by any of these companies. We are building a consumer filtering system, and we are responsible to consumers. If you try it out and find any sites that don't work as intended ple…

Hi, Will you switch over to a paid service once you're out of beta? Also what's your policy on logging? Below (a probably outdated list of) privacy enhanced servers that don't log. # Swiss Privacy Foundation http://www.privacyfoundation.ch/de/service/server.html 77.109.138.45 77.109.139.29 # www.censurfridns.dk http://www.censurfridns.dk/ 91.239.100.100 89.233.43.71 # CCC http://www.ccc.de/censorship/dns-howto 85.214…

We will not - we intend to keep this service free. We hope that some portion of people sign up for our publisher tips, to reward journalists for great content. We take a percentage of they but just as I have publicly said most publishers should NOT block ad blocking users but it's up to them, we hope to provide an optional mechanism for people to pay. Longer term we think a lot of advertising is transformed by software. I wrote about this here - https://medium.com/@robleathern/artificial-intelligence-will...
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