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Block Ads in Apps on Android

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Re: Block Ads in Apps on Android

#91

Post by Fnoord »

jeroenhd wrote: post #87
Fnoord wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the 2 SIM cards I have (Vodafone NL and KPN NL) they don't throttle, as that's illegal, but the plans have data limits (after the limit they just disable 4G for you) and perhaps they do some QoS though. Public WiFi I mainly use Dutch railways (NS) in trains which uses T-Mobile NL. You (or well, anyone, AFAIK) cannot use that to watch on-demand movies though. But I just have that kind of material synced up locally.…

In my experience, there are actually networks that throttle certain kinds of traffic. For example, on the WiFi on Blauwnet trains I can connect to my OpenVPN server but WireGuard just doesn't seem to make it through. I assume this is because of a combination of unknown ports + UDP + uncommon protocols. I think the trick to bypass this kind of nonsense is to use port 443/1194/53 so QoS + firewall rules will still allo…

> Sadly, you won't be able to use QUIC or HTTP3 if you do, but I don't think that's much of an issue these days.

Should still be possible. Xs4all had port 80 set up so that if you'd SSH to it, you'd get connected to their shell while with a browser (the normal modus operandi) you'd end up on their website. It worked very well in some of the more oppressive regimes where traffic to port 22 was blocked.

I also don't serve HTTP(S) content on my home connection. I only host WireGuard, that's part of the point.

Re: Block Ads in Apps on Android

#92

Post by ignoramous »

kfwhp wrote: post #84
Zizizizz wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

instead of 1.1.1.1 use 1dot1dot1dot1.cloudflare-dns.com

Wait, how are you supposed to use a host name as a DNS server?

DNS over HTTPS and DNS over TLS require URLs. Controversial features in that they break abstractions apart from breaking some apps too (for instance, usage of TCP, overhead of TLS/SSL handshakes, absuing HTTP etc)

Re: Block Ads in Apps on Android

#93

Post by therein »

kfwhp wrote: post #84
Zizizizz wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

instead of 1.1.1.1 use 1dot1dot1dot1.cloudflare-dns.com

Wait, how are you supposed to use a host name as a DNS server?

We heard you like to resolve domain names into IP addresses so we put your DNS provider behind an A record.

This way you can resolve while you resolve.

Re: Block Ads in Apps on Android

#94

Post by ywecur »

None of these DNS blockers have ever worked on YouTube for me, nor any of my other streaming apps.

Honestly the only real solution I've found is to use Ublock Origin in Firefox for Android.

Re: Block Ads in Apps on Android

#95

Post by d2p »

> Because the app is open source, if it was doing anything shady, it would be found out

This is a little misleading... Just because there is source code on GitHub does not mean the random APK you're downloading from the internet and side-loading is safe.

If you're paranoid (and you probably should be - if I was a bad person and wanted to get malware onto your machines, I'd be making some useful "open source" app and publishing "its source code" on GitHub too), you'd want to build the app yourself! :)

Re: Block Ads in Apps on Android

#96

Post by vvanders »

michaelmrose wrote: post #89
vvanders wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only site I've seen break was Burrow ironically enough, couldn't get through the checkout flow which is pretty darn stupid for a purchased product. Our solution is simple, we've got two SSIDs, one w/ PH, one without. They route to separate VLANs and each VLAN uses a different gateway+DHCP with pihole or standard DNS. Fixing a website that doesn't work is simple as hopping over on another SSID. We're using UniFi g…

Regarding the web, browser based blocking still makes more sense. If I have 2 tabs one which works with adblock and one which does not I can simply click an icon to enable ads on the one. Changing networks seems like a pain in the neck.

On the flip side I've got 4 different devices across 3 operating systems, but putting it at the DNS layer it just works.

FWIW I've been running pihole for almost a year, aside from the issue with Burrow and some social media redirect links used to track(that I want to block) I've not had any other false positives.

Re: Block Ads in Apps on Android

#97

Post by Marsymars »

I'm all-in for blocking ads, but I've found full-OS ad-blockers to be entirely unnecessary - I simply don't use apps with ads.

The few apps with ads that I sometimes can't avoid aren't fixable by ad-blockers. (e.g. ads in Google Maps)

Re: Block Ads in Apps on Android

#98

Post by michaelmrose »

vvanders wrote: post #96
michaelmrose wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the web, browser based blocking still makes more sense. If I have 2 tabs one which works with adblock and one which does not I can simply click an icon to enable ads on the one. Changing networks seems like a pain in the neck.

On the flip side I've got 4 different devices across 3 operating systems, but putting it at the DNS layer it just works. FWIW I've been running pihole for almost a year, aside from the issue with Burrow and some social media redirect links used to track(that I want to block) I've not had any other false positives.

Firefox + ublock origin works on mac/windows/linux/android/bsd/some more unusual OS

On almost any machine you could have save for ios.

Re: Block Ads in Apps on Android

#99

Post by on_and_off »

>It's important that free apps continue to be made, and app developers need money to go on doing what they do. So if you can't stand ads in your apps, try to support them in another way, by making a donation or paying a few bucks for the full version of their app.

It feels more than a little disingenuous to post that at the end of a post explaining how to cut the revenue source of devs.

If you don't want ads, how about you pay for the premium tier of the app ?

Re: Block Ads in Apps on Android

#100

Post by alias_neo »

oarsinsync wrote: post #52
alias_neo wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting you've found the WireGuard experience to be "seamless". I have a WireGuard VPN at home and experimented with always-on, on my Android phone. Unfortunately, my provider (EE, UK) throttles UDP traffic something rotten, and my normally great experience with 50/50Mb+ is severly limited to between 0 and 10 Mb making my phone almost unusable by normal standards. Does your LTE provider not throttle this way…

I'm using AnyConnect (ocserv backed) VPN, so it presents as TCP/443 and 'upgrades' to UDP/443. Or at least, in theory it's supposed to. I don't think it's actually upgrading to UDP/443 on EE 4G, but throughput speeds with or without the VPN have dropped to <3Mbps in Central London (or 35Mbps+ as soon as I go somewhere less dense) that day to day, I don't notice any impact from the VPN vs not-VPN anyway...

I'm also Central London for work, I typically get at least 30/20 in the office without VPN, and at times up to 50/30, a lot less than the 80/80 I used to get 3-4 years ago in the same spot. With WireGuard I get consistently between 0 and ~10 down. I ran some tests with the guys in WireGuard IRC which seemed to confirm that the issue is specifically EE limiting UDP whether by QoS or otherwise.
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