Recommend you get a Pi-Hole

[ahofer]

I just set one of these up in my network, and I can't recommend it enough.

https://pi-hole.net

This is basically a black hole for advertising and telemetry requests on your network. The request goes from your device to your router, which uses the pi-hole as a DNS server. The Pi-Hole decides whether the request should be relayed back to your router or not. The website thinks it served you an ad, or sent telemetry data somewhere, but it just goes into a "DNS Sink"...the Pi-Hole. Ad-heavy news/sports/badaudioreview websites run MUCH faster, and it's fun to watch all the BS getting re-routed into the "DNS Sink" from your apps, smart TVs, etc. It even blocks ad services inside iPhone/iPad apps, since it runs at the router.

https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/how-does-pi-hole-work/3141

It was super easy to set up - get a Pi (change the password and hostname), install Raspbian, run the install script, give it a static IP from your router, re-set the DNS Server to that static IP and...you're done.

(these are better set-up instructions: https://blog.cryptoaustralia.org.au/instructions-for-setting-up-pi-hole/)

You can check in to the Pi-Hole with your browser and see everything that's been blocked or passed along, which is fun.

Great piece of donation-ware. I donated.

Roughly equivalent to a network-wide version of the free adblocker U-Block Origin does in Chrome (only in the browser, tho), which is, in turn, much better than what adBlocker does, because the serving website doesn't know you are running a blocker.

 

[mnotik]

you mentioned smartTVs, does it block startTV youtube ads? I think I read somewhere it does not as the ad is the same stream as the content, can you please confirm if it works for you? I use adblock in all my devices, but just the youtube smartTV ads alone would be enough reason to convince me to get a pi.

 

[spacebar]

you mentioned smartTVs, does it block startTV youtube ads? I think I read somewhere it does not as the ad is the same stream as the content, can you please confirm if it works for you? I use adblock in all my devices, but just the youtube smartTV ads alone would be enough reason to convince me to get a pi.

I’m sorry it doesn’t. YouTube changed the player and cdn etc so the pi hole is not able to do that anymore :/ YouTube has upped their ad game lately and specially after the Covid.

 

[q3cpma]

As someone who uses DNS blocking right now, it's inferior to browser extensions like Adblock or uBlock because those can collapse the space left by the blocked ad. It's nonetheless a decent project, even teaches newbies to configure their own recursive resolver through unbound.
Would like to see support for a sane distro like Alpine, though.

 

[somebodyelse]

You could be forgiven for thinking Google are pushing for DoH (DNS over https) to bypass things like Pi-Hole, rather than to protect you from spying by your service provider.

 

[ahofer]

As someone who uses DNS blocking right now, it's inferior to browser extensions like Adblock or uBlock because those can collapse the space left by the blocked ad. It's nonetheless a decent project, even teaches newbies to configure their own recursive resolver through unbound.
Would like to see support for a sane distro like Alpine, though.

Right- but sometimes you don't even get past the adblocker detection on media websites. I don't mind the blank space, and Pi-Hole seems faster (having used both)
Also, even though browser blockers can block things other than domain names, they don't work for everyone's phone apps the way this does. I love reading the Times or the Post on my iPad with no ads and a clean, quick page.

 

[Aldoszx]

I am using pi-hole and I like it. For me, is a good alternative to block access to inappropriate sites for my child.

 

[_thelaughingman]

I’ve used Pi-hole for a long time now and it’s a very good network level sink hole for ads and tracking. I have it setup on my home network and my self-hosted VPN that is utilised daily on my phone and Mac with its own recursive encrypted DNS. At home it’s primarily used to block google ads on the Apple TV for the kiddo.

 

[CrustyToad]

It is indeed a great way to block ads. Does an exceptionally good job also on mobile apps (news etc), where ads simply disappear...
You forget about them until you use the apps via a different network again

Sadly for a few apps it does not work at all (YouTube, insta etc) because content and ads are delivered over the same domain so its impossible to block. YouTube on browsers though is a different story and there it works great!

Looking at the dashboard it's just crazy how much of the traffic is ads. I had days with up to 30% of the requests being blocked as ads! So highly recommended!

Mind you, some Google ads when looking for buying products are also blocked.

 

[Serpent]

I've the DNS set up per device as there's 2 devices in the house that the user wants adverts

 

[nemanja_t]

Another happy customer here, in combination with DNS crypt:
Link

 

[mermayer]

A other complete solution (with DNS crypt) is ADGUARD Home.
This software runs on my Music+Video+House server as service and and does a better job than Pi-hole.

 

[_thelaughingman]

A other complete solution (with DNS crypt) is ADGUARD Home.
This software runs on my Music+Video+House server as service and and does a better job than Pi-hole.

I second this, I've been running it on Pi with encrypted DNS setup and it runs a lot better than the Pi.

 

[ahofer]

I second this, I've been running it on Pi with encrypted DNS setup and it runs a lot better than the Pi.

A other complete solution (with DNS crypt) is ADGUARD Home.
This software runs on my Music+Video+House server as service and and does a better job than Pi-hole.

Can you be a little more specific about "better"?

 

[_thelaughingman]

Can you be a little more specific about "better"?

First off you can setup Encrypted DNS within AdGuard Home unlike Pi-hole where you have to download and setup unbound as the dns resolver of encrypted DNS. Encrypted DNS requires your domain name and ability to get a certificate but, the Adguard team has an excellent walkthrough guide on that subject. Secondly there are far more options to route your traffic through third party DNS resolvers if you choose to. It also allows to you set your routing preferences via IPV4 or IPV6 DNS servers. Lastly you can setup your own ad list/ DNS block list within Adguard home.

 

[dasdoing]

I use Brave Browser which blocks all that stuff by default

 

[restorer-john]

@ahofer So will a Pi B+ do the job?

 

[_thelaughingman]

@ahofer So will a Pi B+ do the job?

Yes it has sufficient processing ability to run pi-hole.

 

[HammerSandwich]

Update your Pi-Holes - pretty serious dnsmasq issues were patched yesterday.

 

[JeffS7444]

What better use for a Raspberry Pi 3B+ with broken i2c bus than as ad-blocker! I just set mine up with 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS, Docker and AdGuard, and it's working great! Initially tried Pi-Hole, but AdGuard seems to have more functionality rolled into their containerized software.

I initially continued to use DHCP as provided by my Linksys router, but it turns out that even with all DNS fields pointing to my in-house DNS server, Linksys DHCP continued directing lookups to outside servers as secondary DNS, and there was no apparent way for me to disable the feature save for disabling Linksys DHCP altogether and using AdGuard as DHCP server.