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Mmm, Pi-hole

troyhunt.com

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131–140 of 421 posts

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#131

Post by slacka »

ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #81

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 sh…

> I heavily believe we should be supporting creators

Agreed. Do you disable your pi-hole on sites like Reddit? They vet their ads so not have any of the malicious attributes that you described. All the larger newspagers like WaPo and NYT are also good about this too.

I'm all for blocking intrusive or malicious ads. But quality content depends on ad revenue. The author dedicated an entire paragraph on donating to the pi-hole project, but no mention of supporting quality content with subscriptions or unblocking acceptable ads.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#132

Post by PascLeRasc »

SippinLean wrote: post #110
paulcole wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some websites refusing to function if ads are blocked Don't visit those sites! They want your eyes and/or your money (if a subscription is an option) and you don't want to give it to them. Just stop going there! Edit: I don’t understand the downvotes. Sites aren’t obligated to give you something for nothing. Why does it feel like that’s the default view here?

but there are other people that live in or visit my home. Maybe they want to visit those sites. I'd love a pi-hole like solution that was as easy to temporarily disable as a browser extension.

Like some buttons? https://www.nickearl.net/2018/05/27/controlling-pi-hole-with...

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#133

Post by cptskippy »

ryandrake wrote: post #47
windexh8er wrote: post #26

I'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…

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.

I was doing this using Tomato and it introduced serious stability issues in the two routers (both Asus) I tried it on.

Pi-Hole is a drop in replacement to an existing network setup that doesn't require hacking your router to install a custom firmware. It will also persist router upgrades.

My only gripe with Pi-Hole, which isn't their fault really, is that power losses can quickly corrupt the Raspberry Pi's SD Card. I have my network gear on a battery backup but when I was first validating Pi-Hole I had it sitting on my desktop and managed to corrupt the SD card with power drops.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#134

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

badbug wrote: post #129

I tried pi-hole but my family couldn't make it work. Pihole blocks a lot of content they want to see, for example, email newsletters from our city gov. I understand why (privacy/tracking concerns) but it was just blocking too much and frustrating non-technical users in my house.

I found the same thing with emails sent from an airline. It was frustrating because I did actually want to follow the links in the emails as they were to do with a flight I was taking.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#135

Post by crtasm »

sciurus wrote: post #112
lvh wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is great: it has most of the benefits of an extension without the concern the extension gets compromised (you already have to trust your browser). The only downside is it doesn't address ads in things that aren't browsers, like mobile apps and the like. I wonder how long it's going to take for ads to be implemented server-side entirely.

True. For mobile browsing it works well as long as you use Firefox on your phone too, but it doesn't help for tracking and ads within apps. Pi-hole can help there, but only when you're connected to your home network.

Or when you run openvpn and pi-hole on a server somewhere and VPN your devices via it.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#136

Post by mirceal »

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #134
badbug wrote: post #129

I tried pi-hole but my family couldn't make it work. Pihole blocks a lot of content they want to see, for example, email newsletters from our city gov. I understand why (privacy/tracking concerns) but it was just blocking too much and frustrating non-technical users in my house.

I found the same thing with emails sent from an airline. It was frustrating because I did actually want to follow the links in the emails as they were to do with a flight I was taking.

You can whitelist domains, you can add to the blacklist or you can temporarily disable pihole (5-10min whatever) while you do something.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#137

Post by HammerJack »

This project could be improved by using pi-hole and unbound (docker images available). Unbound is a caching recursive DNS server. In an article all about hijacking and trust of 3rd parties, I find it amusing the author saw fit to point to cloudflare's DNS.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#138

Post by crtasm »

tammer wrote: post #111

There is clearly a mass market for preconfigured plug-&-play versions of this. Reminds me of the little bits they used to (probably still do) sell to go between landline phones & the jack to screen telemarketers.

You have to change DNS on your router or on each device so I don't think it could be entirely plug and play? Preconfigured + some instructions seems doable.

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#139

Post by mirceal »

badbug wrote: post #130
andreasvc wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do I edit the hosts file on my iPhone?

You fire up vi and load /etc/hosts /s

Re: Mmm, Pi-hole

#140

Post by gnufied »

ryandrake wrote: post #80
gnufied wrote: post #49

So I have tried using pi-hole in past and I think one of the problems is - some websites refusing to function if ads are blocked. IIRC - British Airways website uses some javascript that requires ad to be disabled for finishing checking in. It may have changed now but there are other websites too which may or may not work as expected. With browser extensions it is typically easy to disable the ad blocker one time and…

I’ve been running this kind of setup for over 5 years on my home network, and the only complaint I’ve ever gotten was the Google search results that are ads or shopping links don’t work (yes, my wife clicks on these). If a web site didn’t function I wouldnt know it was due to DNS, because I never turn this off. I’d simply chalk it up to it being a defective website and not use it.

Yes - but sometimes you don't have that choice. Would you rather not use a essential service(flight check-in or pay electricity bill) or disable the adblocker temporarily? To each its own I guess and tricky thing with pi-hole is, it is VERY hard to tell if website isn't working because of adblocker or because you are using Linux or it is simply broken.
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