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AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

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Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#161

AdGuard is a Russian company, with Russian engineers, the majority of AdGuard developers and other employees working from Moscow, registered in Cyprus. Not a great recipe. Hard pass on security grounds.

It's open source you can verify it yourself.

Good luck with that.

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what issues you ran into with Pi-hole? I was running my instance for years without a single hiccup. I ended up moving to AdGuard Home about a year ago though because I wanted to run it on my OPNSense box. I have an automatic WireGuard VPN set up on my devices to VPN into my home network when I'm not connected to my SSID, so my local DNS still works remotely.

> I'm curious what issues you ran into with Pi-hole? My primary problem with Pi-hole or any other DNS-based blocker is that it silently breaks things. YouTube stopped saving my spot in videos. I couldn't click through on any link that involved a tracking service. These things accomplish their stated task well, but leave behind an insidious trail of browser errors, broken pages, and broken apps without ever indicating…

Is this an issue that next dns fixes for you?

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#164

I'm experienced in DNS but have never seen the point in DNS blocklists. It feels like the wrong layer. I do adblocking with a browser extension. The adblocking has more context, can modify the page, and has easy UI integration for debugging and turning it off. What else are DNS blocklists for? Clients except browsers? For the record, on my desktop I use systemd-resolved (for DNSSEC) and dnscrypt-proxy2 (for encryptio…

Adblocking via the browser is the best option if it's available. All the games the kids play on their iPad try to insert ads, track them, all that sort of stuff and DNS based Adblocking stops that. My wife's iPhone isn't subject to ads when she's reading the news in Safari. On my Google Pixel I don't see ads in browsers either, Firefox I use uBlock but even the Google Newsfeed uses Chrome for webview, so DNS adblocking stops me having to see the sponsered stuff in there.

There's so many places other than "the browser" to see ads, to even question that seems like not really having knowledge of what the Internet is used for in 2024. Edit: Sorry that's a bit rude, I just meant maybe you don't use it the same way a lot of others do. Sorry for sounding obnoxious and rude.

DNS blocking doesn't stop stuff like ads in Instagram, or Youtueb etc, but it certainly helps in a lot of other situations like Ads in the Imgur app etc etc.

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#165
I wonder how much DNS blocking would contribute to a unique browser fingerprint? Like a tracker could use a range of domains, some of which are known to be blocked by certain end-user software, to build a fingerprint.

I currently use a vanilla LibreWolf which has uBlock Origin and reasonable defaults out of the box for this reason.

My only other line of thinking is that a combination of DNS, IP and in-browser blocking could be more effective than just in-browser alone.

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#166
post #98

Those who are using DNS level ad blocking: how much do sites break? And how easy is it to unblock them? I currently use browser based blocking and find a lot of sites don’t work at all. Typically SPAs. But if I have to use them, I can disable the adblocker in two clicks. How does that compare?

It entirely depends on which blocklist(s) you use. I had to stop using the StevenBlack list because it started breaking a lot of things, apparently intentionally. I recommend using only one list, rather than a combination of several. I switched to the https://oisd.nl Big List, which has been great... although it did break GitHub yesterday. That was the first breakage since I switched, and it was fixed when I reported…

OISD is what I use as well. It's great, the family don't have any issues like we used to with the other lists I used. It doesn't block as much, but I'll take the odd thing slipping through vs not being able to load a page we need.

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious what issues you ran into with Pi-hole? I was running my instance for years without a single hiccup. I ended up moving to AdGuard Home about a year ago though because I wanted to run it on my OPNSense box. I have an automatic WireGuard VPN set up on my devices to VPN into my home network when I'm not connected to my SSID, so my local DNS still works remotely.

> I'm curious what issues you ran into with Pi-hole? My primary problem with Pi-hole or any other DNS-based blocker is that it silently breaks things. YouTube stopped saving my spot in videos. I couldn't click through on any link that involved a tracking service. These things accomplish their stated task well, but leave behind an insidious trail of browser errors, broken pages, and broken apps without ever indicating…

Odd - I have a pi-hole on my home network and never hit the issue with YouTube. The only breakage I've found is the top "results" (actually sponsored ads) on Google search don't work, but I always scroll past those anyway to discourage bad behaviour.

In fact pi-hole works so well that I'm always struck by how awful the internet has become when I venture away from my home network. Doctorow's enshitification in action.

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#168
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My spouse’s device is on a pihole exclusion list. Can you not do this with AdGuard?

What is the reason for someone in the network to not want the filtering? Does this break some websites? My own devices are covered, I definitely want full filtering even when not at home and my devices are completely hackable, but I'm wondering if such a tool would be a convenience for other people using the network in particular with less hackable devices, and people likely to use my network are likely totally unint…

I used to need my wife's devices on the whitelist too - she had a job working with tracking and needing to see trackers fire when she loaded webpages etc. I once made a mistake and she got unwhitelisted and waited 4 hours wondering why her tracking codes "weren't working"

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#169
post #3

I ran a competing project[0] on my home network for a few years before I discovered NextDNS[1]. What I lost in performance (requests don't leave my house) I gained in portability: ALL my devices can take advantage – at home and away – and time-saved. PiHole works 90% of the time, but when it did stop working, I'd have to spend a bit of time fixing it. At $20/year, I simply couldn't compete with NextDNS. Note: This is…

On my Pixel I just set Private DNS. Yea I had to setup a SSL certificate but that's easy to do. So when I leave home, I still use my Adguard server for adblocking without having to touch settings etc (except, as mentioned, captival portals)

I could do the same with "vanilla" DNS (udp port 53) as well, but I don't.

Pihole can't, easily, do Dns vis TLS/QUIC etc without 3rd party stuff being bolted on etc. Adguard Home is a single binary, it's great.

Re: AdGuard Home: Network-wide ad- and tracker-blocking DNS server

#170

I'm experienced in DNS but have never seen the point in DNS blocklists. It feels like the wrong layer. I do adblocking with a browser extension. The adblocking has more context, can modify the page, and has easy UI integration for debugging and turning it off. What else are DNS blocklists for? Clients except browsers? For the record, on my desktop I use systemd-resolved (for DNSSEC) and dnscrypt-proxy2 (for encryptio…

My ISP-supplied router tries to ping back to some “AI driven wifi analytics” bullshit every 30 seconds. I put in a custom block for that. My TV would also probably love to phone home if I connected it to wifi to use the applications on it.

The value is not just that I can block at the network level rather than the application/device level, it’s also that I can see what random connected devices that aren’t general computing devices are trying to do. If they have hard-programmed DNS servers, blocking 53 for any device besides my Adguard server quickly solves that.

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