Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plenty of "smart" appliances phone home unnecessarily.
That isn’t adblocking, though
Well, it's blocking the data being sold on to advertising companies.
Ask HN: What ist your AdBlock strategy?
51–60 of 189 posts
Re: Ask HN: What ist your AdBlock strategy?
#52Firefox + uBlock Origin works well for me! It's all I use.
In addition to that, I use EFF's Privacy Badger
Re: Ask HN: What ist your AdBlock strategy?
#53Not mentioned yet: Paying for YouTube Premium if you and your other family members watch a lot of YT. This is only needed for Smart TVs. It's $23 per month for up to a family of five. You also get YouTube Music as well.
Otherwise, I use Firefox + uBlock Origin + Privacy Badger and also have redundant PiHole servers.
Re: Ask HN: What ist your AdBlock strategy?
#54Firefox + uBlock Origin works well for me! It's all I use.
Ditto except NextDNS as default on my network for DNS blocking. I can switch to cloudflare DNS in Firefox to circumvent DNS routing which is occasionally necessary, mostly to make email links work.
NextDNS does not work many a times. I prefer the iOS app so that it’s easy to disable when needed, but the app has not been updated for a few years. Many a times the test page at test.nextdns.io will show as unconfigured and sometimes it will show as passing the test.
On Apple TV, I have the NextDNS profile installed, but it still doesn’t work.
Most of the community forum posts on NextDNS don’t get any answers. I’m sure the DNS servers exist, but the clients and the configuration options have not been supported by the creators.
I wouldn’t recommend NextDNS to anyone because of this apathy by its creators.
Re: Ask HN: What ist your AdBlock strategy?
#55Whatever you end up using, make sure that there is an easy way to turn it off and on from each client device. A network wide blocker could cause issues with some sites (like banking, as an example).
Tangential topic: I see some suggestions for NextDNS here as an additional layer. I can’t speak for Android, but if you’re looking for iOS/iPadOS/macOS/tvOS, note that NextDNS does not work well on these. The app hasn’t been updated for several years and toggling on the app does nothing (I like the app because I can quickly switch it off and on when needed, which cannot be done with a profile). Most of the time the test page at test.nextdns.io shows as “unconfigured”. Even the profile installation approach does not work on Apple TV (I’ve tried this a few times). Overall, the NextDNS servers around the world exist, but there is zero support and maintenance on the client side for the platforms I mentioned. The community forum has posts about issues that the founders don’t respond to.
At least on macOS, I have Little Snitch that acts as a system wide blocker (one can subscribe to blocking lists just like in uBlock Origin).
Re: Ask HN: What ist your AdBlock strategy?
#56Pi-Hole doesn't need an actual Raspberry Pi.
The software runs fine on a lot of hardware. I have it dockerized (via ansible) and deployed on a couple of regular mini-PCs.
You can run it on a lot of hardware these days, or containerized.
Re: Ask HN: What ist your AdBlock strategy?
#57Whatever you end up using, make sure that there is an easy way to turn it off and on from each client device. A network wide blocker could cause issues with some sites (like banking, as an example). Tangential topic: I see some suggestions for NextDNS here as an additional layer. I can’t speak for Android, but if you’re looking for iOS/iPadOS/macOS/tvOS, note that NextDNS does not work well on these. The app hasn’t b…
I use NextDNS for adblocking on Android via the Private DNS Provider setting, which works nicely. For a while I'd have to disable it to use the Wells Fargo app, but they finally removed whatever dumb dependency (Firebase?) that was breaking that.
Re: Ask HN: What ist your AdBlock strategy?
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you reduce the latency of the upstream DNS resolvers? The closest Cloudflare servers give me 20-25ms DNS resolution times, but with Cloudflare as the upstream DNS in Adguard Home, I'm getting more around 80-110ms.
What sort of workloads are you doing where 60ms extra time on your DNS lookups is an issue?
I naively assumed most OS + routers cache DNS queries so that your typical sites will not even require a lookup. Or is that a bad assumption?
Re: Ask HN: What ist your AdBlock strategy?
#59pfBlockerNG on pfSense does industry-standard DNSBL and IP filtering. That'd be an entirely separate alternative to what you just set up though, and quite a bit more complex.
Re: Ask HN: What ist your AdBlock strategy?
#60OpenWRT, Adguard, Firefox strict, drop cookies, no-script or ublock origin.
I’m trying Quad9 on the upstream DNS but not very familiar with it. What y’all think?
I view these as security and telemetry blockers primarily, they happen to block a lot of ads too.