Does anyone know if firewalls like OPNSense can do IPS for ads and tracking instead of “normal” intrusions like malware?
Or simply use AdGuard DNS
IMO NextDNS is a better solution if you don’t wanna roll your own pihole
pfsense with blockerng anyone?
ADS?
Ads, as in the stuff that is blocked by ublock and pihole.
PiHole doesn’t work with VPNs, does it?
Yep it does, most VPN software lets you configure the DNS server to be your pihole.
If you care about the privacy of your DNS requests, tunnel the pihole through a VPN too
Yes, its a DNS server. You can set up your device to use whatever DNS server you choose, including pihole.
I’ve got my VPN connected with pihole as the default DNS server so it works on my phone when I’m not at home.
Creators put up blinking pop-up windows asking for more donations
Fuck…
Watch better creators that don’t use their fans as a bank account
Portmaster is great, but a network-wide solution like pihole that covers other devices too is invaluable imo
Yes, I know, but my whole network is my Laptop and because of this, I prefer to be able to block individual app conections, not possible with Pi Hole, in which only exist all or nothing.
Pihole and uBlock Origin have different purposes. Pihole blocks ad domains network-wide. uBlock Origin can remove specific elements from specific webpages with surgical precision regardless of the domain the content is served from, so it is a much more precise wide-spectrum content blocker.
In other words, uBlock Origin can block basically everything, but only works in your browser. Pihole blocks fewer things and less precisely but works for all your devices.
Adding to the existing comments, there is also invidious which doesn’t bombard you with adds and if you have a homeserver you can easily host an instance (acts like a frontend to youtube)
I wonder what number of cents a month is more than what content creators get from youtube or their other sites (sans donation platforms like Patreon).
It could be interesting to set aside like $5 a month to have dividends of that go out to people you actively utilize.
If the router provided by my isp won’t allow me to change the dns server, is there a workaround for having to set the local dns server on each device that doesn’t involve getting a new router?
Most cable modem router combos have the ability to turn off the router part and just act as a modem in Bridge mode. If that’s an option, you can get your own router to handle local traffic, including dhcp (and thus dns) for all your local devices.
Obviously, this goes against your request not to get your own router, but I thought I’d mention it in case you thought you would have to buy your own modem as well (which you are also free to do, assuming your isp supports customer-owned modems). The modem part can stay the same while having a separate router not controlled by the isp.
If your particular unit doesn’t allow that, you can usually still locally override dns settings, though this is more for computers and phones than it is some smart home devices. iPhone and Android phones will let you specify dns ip addresses when you set up a wifi connection. Just edit the wifi config and change to a static ip. You can usually safely use the ip address given to you from dhcp, so make a note of your device ip address before changing it to static, and just use the same values. Then you can manually set the dns ip address.
Use the pi or whatever little computer that’s presumably hosting the pi-hole software to also be a DHCP server (and turn off the DHCP server on ISP’s router). It can then advertise itself as the DNS server.
That’s a great idea! I will try it tomorrow, thank you.
adguard DNS on a VPN router is pretty good too.
As is host blocking via OpenWrt
I’ve ran Pihole for years but switched to NextDNS. It gives me more control over my kids access.
For example scheduled access to YouTube and Roblox. Also, since it’s a public service it means I can block them regardless of network. So for example when we are on holiday. My eldest worked out he could use network data on his phone to avoid the Pihole.Oh, and it’s DNS over TLS so queries are now encrypted rather than plain text that regular DNS.
None of this will block YouTube ads though. For that I use NewPipe or Firefox and uBlock Origin.
Can’t they change their DNS settings?
Sure. But they aren’t at that age to be aware. To be honest unless someone is clued up the average person wouldn’t know either.
As someone who had tons of parental controls on my stuff as a child, they might figure it out far quicker than you’d think
They find ways yes. When I was blocking YouTube I found him watching YouTube via Spotify. Not sure how that worked. But I blocked that too as a result.
I don’t think they have anything currently as when it’s blocked you see them outside their bedrooms a lot more!
My mom disabled the browser on my phone, so I hit the button in an app to view the terms of service when then opened up an in-app browser. When she figured out how to stop that, I manually typed out the url for a google search and downloaded the webpage using shortcuts on an iphone, then hopped around the internet by downloading and viewing the webpages of any links I could find. Surprisingly, it worked on things like YouTube as well
On the bright side, stuff like that is why I’m far more computer literate than many other people around my age that aren’t in college for something IT related
How old are they?
13, 12, 9
I’m 13 lol
This might be a good place to ask this. I was messing around with my Asus router setting last night and noticed that it had Ad Guard, which works similarly to PiHole with DNS. To test it I went to Reddit and saw ads still. Is Ad Guard not as effective as PiHole or Reddit ads are DOM based?
As a rule of thumb, I expect that Asus as a business only cares about adbock from two angles:
- A feature to slap on the box for advertising.
- A B2B feature for helping business management make workers more productive.
To the first, there’s little incentive to ever update the lists after you’ve bought the device, so it’s quickly outdated. To the second, it’s like to be far more optimized for Amazon or Newegg, then for Reddit. Between the two, I don’t generally expect them to hold a candle to pi-hole and similar software.
You need to flush your local DNS cache after turning that on for it to be 100% effective.
Forgot unbound
