2663 requests over 17 minutes? Is there a Poe's law for the web?
Mmm, Pi-hole
21–30 of 421 posts
Re: Mmm, Pi-hole
#22Someone on here recently recommended uMatrix for this purpose and I find that a nice trade-off between usability and request blocking. It's an extension but given it's less opaque than a generic ad-blocker I feel more in control and that it's less likely to go 'rogue' like adblockers do.
Here's the thing, gorhill maintains uM and uBlock Origin and he is one of the most trusted names in several sec circles to the degree that ubo has been deployed in many enterprise settings. Is the elephant in the room by Troy 'well do you think gorhill will sell out for a measly 10k?' Or is the market for 'adblocking extensions' that inundated with shoddy extensions that simply serve as data mining tools and Troy wants to make us all aware?
Re: Mmm, Pi-hole
#23It's about time this became a public discussion. Websites have become so horribly bloated, while most discussions seem to revolve around whether ads are acceptable or not.
To be fair, ads are the reason websites are bloated. I don't mind websites loading 50 MB if I'm in awe of the amazing multimedia presentation it's giving me. 50 MB of ads just... isn't.
Re: Mmm, Pi-hole
#24With disabled js dailymail loads 603(6.8MB) files 590 of which are images.
I run uBlock Origin and noscript - even then I'm amazed with how much guff the UK Daily Mail website loads. From their perspective - you would think they would want to reduce the bandwidth to the servers as much as possible...?
Re: Mmm, Pi-hole
#25It's about time this became a public discussion. Websites have become so horribly bloated, while most discussions seem to revolve around whether ads are acceptable or not.
Software in general has become bloated. The increases in performance, memory etc in consumer hardware has been offset by the bloat.
Android P uses 10x as much memory as it did from Gingerbread, I don't feel as if there's 10x as many features.
Re: Mmm, Pi-hole
#26I'm surprised this is the top slot right now. Troy, generally, puts out interesting info on security related news however this feels a bit minimal. Since the project has been around a number of years now, and it's not relegated to only a RPi I would have expected him to delve into things a bit more. Pi-hole will also break things. I think the common one I always heard from users on my network at home were that Google click-thrus for products always fail. But... Don't deploy it on an RPi. It's not worth the inconvenience of maintaining another entire device for a network service. There's an actively maintained container I'd recommend, or it's very easy to deploy as a VM. Troy also didn't hit on anything like DoH or DoT, surprisingly.
Container link: https://hub.docker.com/r/pihole/pihole/
Edit: word
Re: Mmm, Pi-hole
#27Works for most basic ads. Unfortunately basic ads are a thing of the 90's. Does not work for most common ads nowadays, as youtube et. al. run them from the same domain as other important parts for the app/site to run. For these you have to use a different approach, like running an extension in the browser to block them.
Re: Mmm, Pi-hole
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since Pi-Hole is a DNS server running on a separate machine, it just doesn’t have the same level of access as browser extension would. Even if it was rogue, the worst it could do is share the list of domains that you visit, and possibly hijack your HTTP (but not HTTPS) sessions.
You, and the other commentator, are forgetting that the DNS Server handles all connections, not just those from your browser. Are you confident all the self updating software you use has no vulnerabilities? How about the video games that you play? Even assuming the use of HTTPS, there are other threats. For example, PiHole redirecting you to a MiTM, who simply observes your connection and can learn sensitive informat…
Then don't do it and wait for taboola or google ads serve you a drive by rootkit?
Re: Mmm, Pi-hole
#29Works for most basic ads. Unfortunately basic ads are a thing of the 90's. Does not work for most common ads nowadays, as youtube et. al. run them from the same domain as other important parts for the app/site to run. For these you have to use a different approach, like running an extension in the browser to block them.
I see pi-hole as the first line of defense.
With Pi-hole you can disable an adblocker when something doesn't work and still enjoy a fast web.
But Pi-Hole still blocks the majority of ads, so it is possible to use it exclusively if you just want to make the web usable again.
It's also great at home for family members who just want to surf faster and more private and secure but don't mind a couple of ads here and there. Especially when it comes to mobile Apps.
I also want to highlight that most domains that are blocked are usually tracking services which makes Apps and Websites incredibly slow and increase traffic to a large extent. I think blocking those "services" is the true beauty of Pi-Hole. Ad-Tech is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to commercialised tracking.
Re: Mmm, Pi-hole
#30Works for most basic ads. Unfortunately basic ads are a thing of the 90's. Does not work for most common ads nowadays, as youtube et. al. run them from the same domain as other important parts for the app/site to run. For these you have to use a different approach, like running an extension in the browser to block them.
I'm amazed that something that (to me) as simple as an ad and analytics proxy running on the website domain isn't more of a thing yet. That will already circumvent a lot of ad blockers. Well initially anyway, the ones based on blocklists / patterns will probably be updated quickly.