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Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole

cri.dev

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Re: Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole

#61

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.

What VPN are you using?

Re: Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole

#62
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an iOS shortcut that hits the disable endpoint, so they have a button on their phone they tap that will disable it for 30 minutes at a time.

Any chance you can share that shortcut? I currently have a bookmark that my roommate can hit, but a shortcut would be better.

I do the same and use the shortcut at least once a day for things I don't want to permanently unblock but might need occasionally. I set it via a shortlink on bit.ly so it's easy for people to remember/bookmark.

It points to ..../admin/api.php?disable=300&auth=authkey

300: Time in seconds to disable it.

Auth key: You need to have a password set for the Pi-hole installation, and the API key is the salted version of that password. You can find it as the value for the key WEBPASSWORD in your /etc/pihole/setupVars.conf file.

Re: Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole

#64

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!

That is only free for 12 months though. Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud offer one free VM in their "always free" offering. Personally I use a $5/month Digital Ocean box.

Re: Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole

#65

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.

Reading these kind of anecdotes makes me wonder why is this legal or at least opt-in.

Re: Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole

#66
The combination of pihole and raspberry pi has impressed me. I just checked and the last reboot of my pi was 180 days ago, and since then things have just worked.

It's in stark contrast with my server, which admittedly has more demanding tasks. For $35 it's the most trustable computer I bought, I now have a lot of respect for the Pi foundation.

Re: Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole

#67
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…

My wife gets a lot of email, most of it marketing stuff. Most email links will not work with PiHole enabled due to the massive amount of tracking they go through. I always know when she's checking her email if I'm on my phone, cause all of a sudden I start seeing ads for a few minutes.

Re: Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole

#68

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.

How does the Pi-hole achieve this? Does it have a blacklist (I assume) or can it use a whitelist? The services my TV needs to reach are easily enumerable, I pay all of them subscriptions. There is no other valid connection for it to make. Maybe firmware/app updates but I'd kinda prefer to do that myself at this point.

Re: Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole

#70
post #66

The combination of pihole and raspberry pi has impressed me. I just checked and the last reboot of my pi was 180 days ago, and since then things have just worked. It's in stark contrast with my server, which admittedly has more demanding tasks. For $35 it's the most trustable computer I bought, I now have a lot of respect for the Pi foundation.

Is uptime really desirable in this situation? How do you get security updates for a device that lives near the edge of your network?
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