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Mmm, Pi-hole

troyhunt.com

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Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#81

Post by ObsoleteNerd »

My Pi-hole with updated block lists (blocking trackers as well as ads) sits at around 87.7% requests blocked, which is absolutely mind-blowingly ridiculous.

I see absolutely no negative effects browsing like this. Everything I've come across still works fine. Even sites that detect uBlock Origin and tell me to disable it, will work with that disabled and Pi-hole still blocking the ads instead.

I heavily believe we should be supporting creators, and go out of my way to support them in direct ways (Patreon, buying merch, direct donations, Twitch subs, etc), but I absolutely will not submit my family/kids to the mess that is online advertising these days.

Ads that look like legitimate download buttons, or that run scripts to do cryptomining popunders, autoplay video ads with sound, etc etc. Modern online advertising companies are malicious entities that actively harm users, and I absolutely classify them as malware.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#82

Post by karrotwaltz »

galadran wrote: post #7

> Do you use a popular browser extension? How confident are you that the creator wouldn’t accept a $10k offer to hand it over only to have it then go rogue on you? What makes the Pi-Hole organization any more trustworthy? (and the software stack it all depends on) Personally, I'm inclined to trust them both and hope that the long arm of the GDPR will be effective. Optimistic, I know.

Someone very concerned about ads whitelists can also use multiple ad blocking extensions.

It would take every creator to accept the bribe for the ads to go through. Well, if the extension starts injecting ads it's another story...

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#83

Post by andreasvc »

briffle wrote: post #58
andreasvc wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The simplest approach is to use a hosts file: https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

That doesn't work the same as pihole. PiHole blocks ads on ALL devices on your network. Your computer, your laptop, your phone, your kids kindle, etc. As long as they are on your network, they are protected (and browsing web pages on an older phone, things are much faster)

Yup, that's a downside. The advantage is that it's much simpler and will also work when you're not on your home network.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#84

Post by gorhill »

egeozcan wrote: post #36
interfixus wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, a bit bothersome at times. But if I take the trouble to finetune worthwhile sites I run into, and make the settings permanent, life does get markedly easier after a while. I rarely see an ad. I didn't see Troy's responsible sponsor message either. I should have and would have if he had chosen to display the thing without the need for scripting. So I don't feel hugely guilty.

I have uMatrix and uBlock. In my case it was uBlock blocking the ad, not uMatrix... or maybe I had whitelisted it before? Not sure. edit: Okay, it's not blocked by default with uMatrix: https://i.imgur.com/B97lf35.png

uBO can block with pattern-matching URLs of network requests and additionally cosmetic filtering (hide DOM elements), while uMatrix works strictly with hostname of network requests and types of resources.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#85

Post by Dragonai »

giarc wrote: post #67
galadran wrote: post #7

> Do you use a popular browser extension? How confident are you that the creator wouldn’t accept a $10k offer to hand it over only to have it then go rogue on you? What makes the Pi-Hole organization any more trustworthy? (and the software stack it all depends on) Personally, I'm inclined to trust them both and hope that the long arm of the GDPR will be effective. Optimistic, I know.

https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole Pi Hole is open source, so if someone did try to sneak in some malicious code, it would be seen.

Just as a note, a project being open-source doesn't necessarily provide a 100% guarantee that it doesn't contain any (possibly obfuscated) malicious code. Our community likes to think that someone else would catch it, but enough people thinking that way can (and likely often does) lead to the bystander effect. So it's always good to be wary :)

Edit: Heartbleed was a good example of this -

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3223203/vulnerabilities/wh...

> The most ironic thing here is that OpenSSL is open source software. Anyone could look at the code, and presumably hundreds did, but nobody noticed the fairly elementary coding error.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#86

Post by ricketycricket »

chupasaurus wrote: post #53
philg_jr wrote: post #13

Pi-hole is cool, but only works on your home network unless you use a VPN to connect back home and funnel all traffic over the connection. I'll continue putting my trust in uBlock Origin on FF for now, until I hear about any malicious PRs that get merged in /shrug/

You can wind up a Linux VDS with dnsmasq and blacklist of domains, then use it on any device everywhere.

If you trust your ability to secure a publicly-accessible DNS server. Pretty attractive target.

Also, you can't usually specify DNS servers on cellular connections. The VPN setup would address that.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#87

Post by krageon »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #76
isserson wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that case, these news businesses should not be publishing content on the World Wide Web. Users pay for devices, electricity, and monthly network connection, These publishers seem to be stuck in the last epoch. A website is not a finished product like a book or newspaper, it is publicly-accessible data. Users can scrape, restyle, delete, and add content _at will_ whenever they choose to download this content. So th…

So what's the impetus for the news business to be available online? If the world wide web should be a free love utopia of data slurping why would these agencies, who have been built on the assumption that the creation and presentation of their data has an inherent worth? How do they get remunerated for their efforts? Or do they just never try to take advantage of this new epoch and die off, leaving us with a billion…

I would pay for a source of journalism that had any actual effort put in it and wasn't blatantly and hilariously wrong almost all of the time. Sadly news agencies don't fit that bill at all.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#88

Post by callahad »

r3bl wrote: post #6

Off-topic, but that Vollkron font definitely styles 1s very weirdly. I thought it said I.I.I.I instead of 1.1.1.1 until I copied the text and pasted it somewhere else.

That's a common, traditional form for non-lining numerals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_figures)

Turns out, Al Gore doesn't like it, either: https://www.typotheque.com/blog/gores_choice

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#89

Post by sciurus »

I don't use a browser extension, I use Firefox's built-in tracking protection. It is only enabled by default in private browsing mode, but it's easy to enable it for all your browsing. See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection

I get 126 requests and 2.3 MB transferred on Daily Mail Australia, which seems comparable or better than what Troy saw with Pi-hole. See https://postimg.cc/3WYwZf3b

(Disclosure: I work for Mozilla.)

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#90

Post by creeble »

mistermann wrote: post #60
ryandrake wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s essentially dnsmasq which can be run directly on your wireless router if you are using custom firmware. No separate hw needed, no need to horse around with dockers or containers or any of that stuff. I’d guess a lot of people are already running dnsmasq for other purposes, so adding the blocklist and periodically updating it should be trivial.

Can anyone recommend a "2018 good choice" for a consumer router that can run custom firmware (including dnsmasq), or a trustworthy recommendation website? Wirecutter for example doesn't note third party firmware: https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-wi-fi-router/

I buy my routers from flashrouters.com. A little overpriced, but I trust them and their testing. I have the Asus N16rt (I think) running shibby tomato and it's great.

Despite this, I run pi-hole on an RPi that I have done so much as a reboot on in two years.

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