Live data from Hacker News

The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

standard.co.uk

121–130 of 445 posts

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#121
post #27
post #3

Any recommendations for a good ad blocker and other precautions to take?

If you're on Android also use Blockada to block ads in app. It's a local VPN server that filters out requests to ad servers. I think there are other apps like that but I never used anything else.

Blokada started sputtering out on me so I switched to AdAway on F-Droid.

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#122
post #71

Or, in other words, FBI now recommends using Android :-) It's baffling how much better uBlock Origin + Firefox experience on Android is compared to any iOS ad blocker I have tried. They kind-of work but let half of the ads through.

Brave browser works just fine for iOS

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DNS adblocking isn't even remotely comparable to ublock origin

Can you please elaborate on this? thanks

Pretty sure they are referring to cosmetic filtering which is not possible at a DNS level

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#124
post #71

Or, in other words, FBI now recommends using Android :-) It's baffling how much better uBlock Origin + Firefox experience on Android is compared to any iOS ad blocker I have tried. They kind-of work but let half of the ads through.

Yeah, android trades browser ads for system wide tracking. I’m not really sure that’s a good deal.

That is only if you have Google Play Services installed.

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#125
post #71

Or, in other words, FBI now recommends using Android :-) It's baffling how much better uBlock Origin + Firefox experience on Android is compared to any iOS ad blocker I have tried. They kind-of work but let half of the ads through.

So tell me what ads I’m not blocking and haven’t been blocking for the last 7 years on iOS?

And bonus points - my ad blocker works with embedded web views

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#126
post #62

Here are a few things I do to combat nasty websites: - blacklists entire domains using wildcards (using an "unbound" DNS resolver and forcing all traffic to my DNS resolver, preventing my browser to use DoH -- I can still then use DoH if I want, from unbound) - reject or drop a huge number of known bad actors, regularly updated: they go into gigantic "ip sets" firewall rules - (I came up with this one): use a little…

While these are all good practices, killing DoH conclusively on your home network is more difficult than you've made it seem, as ultimately all you can really do is use domain blacklists at your firewall. It's no longer as straight forward as just control port 53 traffic, not like you can realistically shut down 443... Blocking DoH is largely whack-a-mole and I think is only going to get worse as this and similar tec…

But:

1. couldn’t you “just” (yea yea I know) install a cert on all your devices and force all 443 traffic though a proxy (like some corporate networks do)?

2. (Something I’ve been meaning to get around to trying for a while) default-block outgoing connections unless unless the external host was recently resolved for the corresponding internal host via your internal resolver? That seems like it would kill anything that tries to avoid your ad-blocking resolver. It seems like that might block hard-coded addresses too, but that could be a good thing..

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, android trades browser ads for system wide tracking. I’m not really sure that’s a good deal.

That is only if you have Google Play Services installed.

So you mean like 99%+ of all Android devices sold outside of China?

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#128
post #80
post #71

Or, in other words, FBI now recommends using Android :-) It's baffling how much better uBlock Origin + Firefox experience on Android is compared to any iOS ad blocker I have tried. They kind-of work but let half of the ads through.

Brave browser on iOS has good blocking, but the browser experience itself is a bit of a mixed bag.

Browser experience is shite like any other Safari wrapped abomination

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#129
post #71

Or, in other words, FBI now recommends using Android :-) It's baffling how much better uBlock Origin + Firefox experience on Android is compared to any iOS ad blocker I have tried. They kind-of work but let half of the ads through.

So tell me what ads I’m not blocking and haven’t been blocking for the last 7 years on iOS? And bonus points - my ad blocker works with embedded web views

PiHole?

Re: The FBI now recommends using an ad blocker when searching the web

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So tell me what ads I’m not blocking and haven’t been blocking for the last 7 years on iOS? And bonus points - my ad blocker works with embedded web views

PiHole?

So I got to set up another server or I can Judy install any ad blocker for iOS.
Post reply on HN