Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole • Hacker News Board

Re: Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole

#51

Post by senectus1 » Mon, May 04, 2020, 11:51 PM UTC

ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #42

jedberg wrote: post #20

Is anyone successfully using PiHole with non-technical users? My main concern with putting PiHole on my home network is that for example my mother in law might not understand that she can't get to some web page because it's being ad-blocked, nor would she be able to go to the web admin page and temporarily unblock it. Even as a technical person sometimes it takes a while to figure out that a page isn't working becaus…

I've set it up for most of my close family and friends, added a physical button to the top of the Raspberry Pi case that disables it for x minutes (x changes depending who they are and their needs), so if they're having issues they go press the button to access the problematic website. I keep reading about people having to disable the Pi-Hole so much that it becomes annoying, or constantly butting heads with websites…

I like the button idea... you got a howto for that?

Re: Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole

#52

Post by christian_fei » Mon, May 04, 2020, 11:51 PM UTC

oschvr wrote: post #50

Funny, I did the exact same thing 1 week ago https://oschvr.com/posts/blocking-ads-with-pihole/

interesting! nice site

Re: Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole

#53

Post by katsura » Mon, May 04, 2020, 11:53 PM UTC

bberrry wrote: post #10

I wish it were more effective in removing Youtube ads on my kids' iPads, but I understand it's a tall order. At least it gets rid of ads in most other apps.

I've been using Lockdown[0] on my iPhone. It blocks everything for me, and is open source.

[0] https://lockdownhq.com/

Re: Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole

#54

Post by christian_fei » Mon, May 04, 2020, 11:57 PM UTC

katsura wrote: post #53

bberrry wrote: post #10

I wish it were more effective in removing Youtube ads on my kids' iPads, but I understand it's a tall order. At least it gets rid of ads in most other apps.

I've been using Lockdown[0] on my iPhone. It blocks everything for me, and is open source. [0] https://lockdownhq.com/

Have to try this too

Re: Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole

#55

Post by Blackadderz » Tue, May 05, 2020, 12:01 AM UTC

Pi-hole has been excellent. I was able to discover that my Samsung TV was reporting minute by minute updates on what I was watching to a local Australian company.

Unplugged it faster than I could swear.

Re: Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole

#56

Post by jachee » Tue, May 05, 2020, 12:14 AM UTC

ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #42

jedberg wrote: post #20

Is anyone successfully using PiHole with non-technical users? My main concern with putting PiHole on my home network is that for example my mother in law might not understand that she can't get to some web page because it's being ad-blocked, nor would she be able to go to the web admin page and temporarily unblock it. Even as a technical person sometimes it takes a while to figure out that a page isn't working becaus…

I've set it up for most of my close family and friends, added a physical button to the top of the Raspberry Pi case that disables it for x minutes (x changes depending who they are and their needs), so if they're having issues they go press the button to access the problematic website. I keep reading about people having to disable the Pi-Hole so much that it becomes annoying, or constantly butting heads with websites…

> What websites are people visiting that the Pi-Hole doesn't work with?

Usually sites where the dev has based functionality on a JS module loaded from an advertise/tracker site, and that is being blocked, resulting in missing functionality.

Two prominent examples that I've personally had to deal with: CVS, and Taco Bell's iOS app.

Edit: Oh, and google's inserted redirects in shopping results lists are blocked by default.

Re: Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole

#57

Post by brchn » Tue, May 05, 2020, 12:21 AM UTC

jbaber wrote: post #35

bberrry wrote: post #10

I wish it were more effective in removing Youtube ads on my kids' iPads, but I understand it's a tall order. At least it gets rid of ads in most other apps.

I pay google the $10/mo. for no ads on youtubeso the kids don't get exposed. The extra benefits are - play video with the screen off to listen to lectures - youtube music - specifically good for letting the toddler hear the wiggles without having to watch a wiggles video on youtube I also pay hulu for no ads. I'm happy for the opportunity to pay directly for entertainment instead of with my eyeballs. No way to opt ou…

> specifically good for letting the toddler hear the wiggles without having to watch a wiggles video on youtube

I like how you phrased this as a solved engineering problem.

Re: Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole

#58

Post by ObsoleteNerd » Tue, May 05, 2020, 12:29 AM UTC

rablackburn wrote: post #47

ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've set it up for most of my close family and friends, added a physical button to the top of the Raspberry Pi case that disables it for x minutes (x changes depending who they are and their needs), so if they're having issues they go press the button to access the problematic website. I keep reading about people having to disable the Pi-Hole so much that it becomes annoying, or constantly butting heads with websites…

I like that physical button solution. Do you have a github repo or blog post documenting how you did it anywhere?

I haven't posted anything, but it's pretty simple really. Follow any of the guides to make a physical button run a Python/BASH script[0] and then I wrote a small script that just CURLs the URL to disable the Pi-Hole for a few minutes (eg: curl --silent http://192.168.2.2/admin/api.php?disable=600&auth=PASSWORD ).

I've been meaning to make a blog post about it but haven't got around to it yet. I'll try write something up later today/tonight.

[0] https://raspberrypihq.com/use-a-push-button-with-raspberry-p...

Edit: I found this which is a much bigger/fancier version of what I did, but has the associated code you can pull out for a simple button: https://github.com/nickearl/piHoleButtons

Re: Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole

#59

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Tue, May 05, 2020, 12:31 AM UTC

ananonymoususer wrote: post #49

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #21

For my home desktop browser, I just use uBlock Origin to block ads. But for my phone, I set up a PiHole running on an EC2 instance and VPN into it from my phone. Blocks ads in everything, not just my web browser. The VPN is configured to only tunnel DNS lookups, not traffic, so the EC2 bandwidth bill is minimal.

Probably lightweight enough for the free EC2 tier too!

Oh, absolutely.

But I have an instance that I already use for other things (IRC bouncer, Mumble server, Taiga task/issue tracker, and test server for a game I was writing) that has plenty of CPU time to spare, so it's not costing me anything.

Re: Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole

#60

Post by ObsoleteNerd » Tue, May 05, 2020, 12:31 AM UTC

senectus1 wrote: post #51

ObsoleteNerd wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've set it up for most of my close family and friends, added a physical button to the top of the Raspberry Pi case that disables it for x minutes (x changes depending who they are and their needs), so if they're having issues they go press the button to access the problematic website. I keep reading about people having to disable the Pi-Hole so much that it becomes annoying, or constantly butting heads with websites…

I like the button idea... you got a howto for that?

Answered above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23075004