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Pi-hole: A black hole for Internet advertisements

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Re: Pi-hole: A black hole for Internet advertisements

#101

Post by yegle »

segfaultbuserr wrote: post #62
brianpayne2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the advantages of using Cloudflare's DNS as opposed to say Google DNS or your ISP? Tracking?

Due to the architecture of DNS, DNS is not end-to-end encrypted. There is a potential solution (djb's DNSCurve), but it will not be deployed. As a result, let's do an assessment. Using Google DNS, self-hosted resolver, or your ISP's DNS : NSA, your ISP, everyone and every dog at the middle of your link to the Internet can track and see your requests. Using CloudFlare's DNS w/ DNS-over-HTTPS : only NSA (via a NSL or s…

Wait a minute... First Google DNS provide both DNS-over-HTTPS and DNS-over-TLS, second Pihole (or should I say dnsmasq, or FTL the name of their dnsmasq fork) does not support forwarding DNS query request to upstream using neither DNS-over-HTTPS and DNS-over-TLS.

In any case, if you really want a full solution, build your own https://github.com/yegle/your-dns

Re: Pi-hole: A black hole for Internet advertisements

#102

Post by stevesearer »

mises wrote: post #74
ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What type of overhead is associated with this? Are you experiencing an increase in server costs? What about the resources it takes to build those relationships, maintain the content, or manage the infrastructure? I'm very interested in learning more...

I'm also wondering how revenue compares. Every one clearly seems to think that "perosnalized" ads are worth more; can you offer any insight into if you make more or less with personalized vs your approach? People seem to have forgotten that users are most likely to be interested in what they are currently reading, because it is what their mind is currently focused on.

I wish I had a deep and thoughtful answer, but a simplistic one is that we do get to keep 100% of the revenue for the ads we sell so in that sense we make more.

Because our content is so specific, ads which are relevant to the content end up targeting the user because you wouldn't be spending time on the site unless you care about the content.

Re: Pi-hole: A black hole for Internet advertisements

#103

Post by pjc50 »

dTal wrote: post #96
pjc50 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the dark side of DNS-over-HTTPs: it prevents the network operator from changing what is received by browsers. Sometimes this is legitimate, as in Pi-hole. Paul Vixie got very upset when he discovered that his chromecast bypasses local DNS settings to go directly to Google: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19170671 I wouldn't be surprised if soon Chrome defaults to DNS-over-HTTPs direct to base, except for…

The problem is two mutually incompatible use cases: 1) trusted endpoint / untrusted network (laptop in a coffee shop) 2) untrusted endpoint / trusted network (chromecast/alexa/other corporate zombie on your home network) Which category a given scenario falls under depends on who you ask - to Google, Chromecast is in the first category. I don't know if it's possible to design a system that somehow always favors the ri…

> I don't know if it's possible to design a system that somehow always favors the rights of the individual.

This is why people keep objecting to technological solutions to social problems. Adblocking is a stopgap technological solution (although very effective at the moment); properly protecting the rights of the individual requires a social and legal process.

Re: Pi-hole: A black hole for Internet advertisements

#104

Post by lern_too_spel »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #2

[tinfoilhat] Given that Chrome now became Google's weapon against adblocking, how long until it starts refusing to use Pi-hole specifically? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044430 [/tinfoilhat]

Chrome's future crippled adblocking support is still more powerful than pi-hole.

Re: Pi-hole: A black hole for Internet advertisements

#106

Post by malvosenior »

bungie4 wrote: post #24
ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #17

Pi-hole is my most prized addition to my connected home. It was simple to set up, easy to manage, and easy to access for whitelisting. Now, all of my devices throughout my network benefit from the service, as opposed to relying on locally installed solutions. If you aren't using it, you should!

Agreed, I combined this with Cloudflare's DNS service (1.1.1.1). A great combo.

I would like to use Cloudflare DNS but they have a bug open with archive.is so you can't see archived links if you use them.

https://community.cloudflare.com/t/1-1-1-1-does-not-resolve-...

Re: Pi-hole: A black hole for Internet advertisements

#107

Post by swozey »

jdlyga wrote: post #7

Is it easy to disable adblocking on sites that won't work with adblockers? I like to have the option to disable adblocking in my toolbar. For example, certain bank websites, business websites, etc.

People here are gushing amazing over pihole but I don't find it that amazing in the least. In fact what you're describing is one of the most annoying parts of it. I still use it and I did donate to it but it's hardly without it's annoyances. In fact if I didn't already own one I wouldn't build another.

There isn't a chrome extension or anything to white list a site quickly. You have to go back into the interface, login, and whitelist, go back and load the page then you'll find that you needed to whitelist a few subdomains/cdns as well. This is really fun when you've got all your devices using the Pihole for DNS and you can't load something on your phone/TV and need to run to your laptop to deal with it.

If you just got your pihole you probably threw in a bunch of community generated lists and you'll find a good amount of stuff you do visit gets blocked. You can get to Google but not Google drive, so you whitelist it. And you do this over and over again until you finally get annoyed because you just want to make a car payment so you permanently disable it for 5 minutes, or 60 minutes if you've gotten annoyed enough.

Sometimes weeks will go by and you'll forget you even had it disabled at all.

FWIW, I also don't use NoScript because I find it incredibly annoying. This is one step further from the NoScript annoyance because you have to go into the webUI and make your changes.

If you don't mind NoScript you'll probably be fine with Pihole. Or if you have the time to curate and pick lists that fit exactly within your browsing habits.

Re: Pi-hole: A black hole for Internet advertisements

#108

Post by programbreeding »

ChikkaChiChi wrote: post #17

Pi-hole is my most prized addition to my connected home. It was simple to set up, easy to manage, and easy to access for whitelisting. Now, all of my devices throughout my network benefit from the service, as opposed to relying on locally installed solutions. If you aren't using it, you should!

Over 50% of my DNS queries get blocked by the pihole [0]; and I've seen it much higher. Like you said, it's one of the most prized devices on my network.

[0] https://i.imgur.com/dPZzYjL.png

Re: Pi-hole: A black hole for Internet advertisements

#109

Post by jamiequint »

gcthomas wrote: post #71
jamiequint wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's wrong with the "old" way A couple things: 1. It facilitates a world in which only large content providers, who can afford to individually sell ads to advertisers, to exist. There's a lot of overhead to ad sales and individual companies do not want to work with 1,000,000 providers, they want to work with 10-100. 2. It's substantially less efficient and only works for brand advertising or mass-market direct-re…

Tracking ads are collecting data on people without their explicit consent or knowledge. The trade in bulk personal data is a stain on the internet. I am quite content to block these sorts of adverts and I'm not worried by the site's loss of revenue. I am not responsible for their slimy choice in business model. Let's get back to context based adverts like DuckDuckGo use. There was no need for the internet to take thi…

> There was no need for the internet to take this path - it only did so to rapidly monetise after the dot-com bust blew their VC funded rapid growth plans out of the water.

No need, aside from the trillions of dollars of economic value it created and hundreds of thousands of previously impossible businesses it created.

Re: Pi-hole: A black hole for Internet advertisements

#110

Post by josteink »

segfaultbuserr wrote: post #62
brianpayne2 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the advantages of using Cloudflare's DNS as opposed to say Google DNS or your ISP? Tracking?

Due to the architecture of DNS, DNS is not end-to-end encrypted. There is a potential solution (djb's DNSCurve), but it will not be deployed. As a result, let's do an assessment. Using Google DNS, self-hosted resolver, or your ISP's DNS : NSA, your ISP, everyone and every dog at the middle of your link to the Internet can track and see your requests. Using CloudFlare's DNS w/ DNS-over-HTTPS : only NSA (via a NSL or s…

> Using ... your ISP's DNS: NSA, your ISP, everyone and every dog at the middle of your link to the Internet can track and see your requests.

Technically speaking the NSA wouldn’t be seeing your DNS requests, they would be seeing your ISP’s, for all its users anonymised.

If you use Cloudflare or Google DNS directly from home (or your own resolver), then yes, the NSA and anyone else can track your individual DNS requests directly.

In that regard using your own ISP’s DNS is clearly superior.

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