91–100 of 159 posts
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Pi-Hole + VPN usually works without issue for me.
This is the way. I have a PiHole running in EC2 and I just VPN into it. The VPN is configured so that only DNS goes through it, so I don't tunnel all my traffic through it and pay for lots of egress. Could easily run the VPN through something local, of course, but I prefer to expose as little as possible on my home network.
I don't. I think adblocking is a form of petty theft. If something has too much ads, I don't use it or pay for the ad-free version. I pay for YouTube Premium. Also adblocking does reduce some experiences. Some sites will tell you to disable it, and that's more irritating than the ad banners. I had conversation with my daughter on how games used to have no ads but now they're chock full of ads, but TV has no ads now b…
Me, advertising is fine on most of the sites I like, and I don’t like ripping off sites that are dependent on ad income. You may not like this answer but you asked and that is my reason. I think about advertising 50 times less than I think about cookie warnings.
He pays them a monthly fee.
How is that equivalent to they are dependent on ad income?
They also receive massive amounts of money from their data moats on their Bloomberg terminals charging upwards of $20,000 a year
Me, advertising is fine on most of the sites I like, and I don’t like ripping off sites that are dependent on ad income. You may not like this answer but you asked and that is my reason. I think about advertising 50 times less than I think about cookie warnings.
>and I don’t like ripping off sites that are dependent on ad income. He pays them a monthly fee. How is that equivalent to they are dependent on ad income? They also receive massive amounts of money from their data moats on their Bloomberg terminals charging upwards of $20,000 a year
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Cloudflare's operating probably the largest man-in-the-middle data harvesting operation in the world (at least in the commercial world) If a site's running Cloudflare, and I don't have an amazing overarching reason to hit the site (eg my dr's portal), I add it to my block list
It is not always bad to harvest data. As a developer, I understand that there are often valid reasons for doing so. I'm not sure where everyone got the idea that tracking and harvesting data is always bad. In addition, it is essentially impossible to have something harmful happen to you if you refrain from entering your bank password on websites.
There are a tiny handful of use cases where it is not
I don't understand how people are not more aware of the invasiveness of such activities
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> seeing any particular ad is the least of your problems I run a blocker. But for a general user not hitting shadier corners of the web and careful what they click on - What are the larger problems people discuss, and how are they relevant in the day-to-day?
If you're located in a non-GDPR (or in a lesser sense CCPA) legislation area, YOU are being tracked cross-site and profiles are being built on your data to better target and sell your behavior for the pleasure of using the Interwebs. Do EVERYTHING in your power to avoid that.
The question was, "Why should I care?" A nebulous 'They' have had profiles on all of us since at least the 50s regardless; what's the difference and harm?
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I work in digital media and I utterly and entirely recommend EVERYONE use ad/analytics/tracking blockers and browsers which limit user-level data collection and tracking. As someone who works in the field and actively builds end-arounds to systems that thwart our ability to easily track your behaviors online, it's in your best interest to do so. Sure, you don't have to do any of this, but seeing any particular ad is…
The only real attack I've heard about is that if your insurance company finds out you participate in risky behaviors, they'll raise your rates. Otherwise why does it matter if Google knows my age and some of my hobbies?
I do use adblockers, so much so that I basically only use android because of all the system-wide adblocking capabilities, including youtube ads. I occasionally switch off adblockers to see what the rest of the world sees. Within seconds I am shocked every single time. Some sites I use are unusable without adblockers. The youtube experience is attrocious without adblockers. Amazon products are impossible to find witho…