My Raspberry Pi SD card finally died after almost 10 years, and I was hosting Pi-Hole on it. After a year of Pi-Hole I didn't realize how many things had freaken ads. They pop up everywhere! I really need to get a new SD card :(
Then install log2ram to avoid constant writes to SD card. Or install DietPi instead of the stock OS, its installed automatically. Honestly DietPi just rocks for SBCs in general, good text UI and utilities.
Is dietPi the same as PiOS lite? I use PiOS lite with no GUI etc
Probably not, think of it as a different distro. It is Debian based, and supports many different SBCs and not just the RPi. https://dietpi.com/
10 years is a pretty good run for an SD card.. was it an endurance SD? That’s what I’m running. Fried a non-endurance one in under a year, replaced it with an endurance and reduced log writing frequency with some config change and have been cruising for 3-4 years so far.
Endurance cards are so worth it. They’re what I use in my Pi units and our dash cams. I just whish I hadn’t fried so many normal cards before coming around.
Its an old meme sir, but it checks out
When I want an ad gone, I reach for brand name soda. Brand name soda, it means you're smart.
Not if it is my ad, Golden Globe nominated movie, Barbie, is now available on Blu-ray and select streaming services.
Nowhere is safe. No where.
Ublock origin
That only stops browser activity? What about windows, discord, nvidia, ... ? :p
Those are all blocked on my pihole ( i run both pihole and ublock btw )
I guess I just don't trust Windows discord and Nvidia. I don't think DNS filtering will protect you if they control the computer
I don't bother with PiHole because DNS-based ad blocking quite frankly sucks and is only getting worse.
I'm still waiting for someone like AdGuard to release a MITM proxy that does something similar to uBlock Origin and strips ads directly from the network traffic
But until then, browser extensions are good enough for most usecases (Firefox user so the adblocking ones work on mobile as well)
I wish I could pi-hole.
I use NextDNS and it's good for my devices, but Google sponsored links won't work with it. Sometimes I have to turn it off temporarily to get something done.
Also, my wife works from home in social media. I can't really block ads network-wide because she needs to see them.
😕
You can setup separate vlans, or even separate networks for allowing the ads if you need.
You can - my wife works with ads as well.
What I ended up doing - I set her laptop with a static IP and added TCP and UDP routes for port 53 (the one used for DNS queries) to 8.8.8.8 - no complaints since ;) I use a cheap Mikrotik router between my ISP one and the actual network (well, a NAS and a Unifi AP, the rest is wireless) so doing it was easy ;)
Both of your wives are plants by the marketing firm to make sure your attempts to remove all ads are stymied. You'll have to kill her. I'm sorry.
We're on holidays and the kids had me install WireGuard on their devices to get rid of the ads, you know, like it is at home.
Does YouTube trigger his anti-adBlock with a piHole?
No because pi-hole does not block YT ads
uBlock Origin on Firefox still works great if you keep the filters up to date every once in a while c:
I've used Pihole for so long.. I bought the original pi as a curiosity but Pihole was best use of it.
Here is the problem though, which i assume applies to all adblockers: everything is now "sponsored links". Google, Amazon, etc. They are of course blocked which is getting really frustrating.
So what do we do now? Is there a way to just send fake telemetry? Saw VLANs mentioned. Is that the way? I'm getting older and life gets busier and it's harder for me to keep up on this.
Privacy Badger, if you want to try to reduce your tracking data.
Privacy Possum, if you want to send bullshit tracking data to cost companies money.
I don't quite understand the use-case for the pi-hole. Why use it, when one could simply use something like µBlock Origin?
µBlock Origin is great for browsers that support extensions. But that won't get most Android TV ads or Apple TV users. And I suspect many of the people with pi hole also use µBlock Origin for redundancy.
One example. Can't really AD block ios that easily. But with a pi hole you don't need to worry about anything.
Just setup the pi hole static IP as the dns in your routers settings and all devices are behind the one interface.
Got an issue? Just login to the pi hole website to manage it. White list some critical AD site for some stupid mobile game your kids play for example.
Ads are not only present in the browser. For example, there are Smart (not really lol) TVs that have ads embedded right into the operating system (https://reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/co5aw4/unremovable_ads_on_my_2500_samsung_smart_tv/). You can't install an adblocker there, but a DNS based filter will know how to deal with this. There are other alternatives, some are cloud hosted like NextDNS or ControlD, there are other local alternatives like AdguardHome or PfBlockerNG if you run a PfSense Firewall. There are also simple solutions like AdGuard's Public DNS or Mullvad's Adblocking DNS servers. If you use an iPhone or iPad, you can easily download a configuration profile that includes the DNS settings for these services. I think NextDNS offers a similar service. On Android, you can just set up Dns over TLS, I think it's called Private DNS in the settings. DNS adfiltering can't get rid of all ads though, e.g. YouTube's mechanism for displaying ads is resistant to DNS filtering. That's what uBlock Origin if for though.
They are kind of two separate things.
Pi-Hole will work on literally every device on your network. It can block ads on smart TVs, cell phones, etc. It can prevent certain forms of tracking on video doorbells, voice assistants, cameras, etc. You can also set up custom DNS to restore online service to old game consoles or to host web services at home.
You also get all the metrics. For example, I can see that my computer reaches out to my printer several times a minute and that the Oculus app for my Quest 2 was reaching out to its servers even when the app was “closed”.
You could also use it as a sort of parental control. It can provide one set of block lists to the parent’s devices and a different one to the kids devices. Or you could do the same with IoT devices so they are only allowed to reach out to the services they need to be able to run.
uBlock is still important though. It’s possible to get around a DNS filter like Pi-Hole by serving ads from the same domain that the core service is served through. uBlock Origin can do things like block YouTube ads for instance.
I've wanted to do this for some time, but everyone tells me there's no way to make it work without constantly updating the blacklist. Is it really such a hassle?
No lol It's so low maintenance that it took me about a month to figure out why it kept crashing. The answer was completely my fault as I forgot I gave the container running it only about 8gb of disk space and it filled up.
I only log into the console to check some metrics/verify no issues/run updates and I maybe do that once every 3 months. I don't have my pi-hole set up the same way as the basic tutorial but as far as lists go I just subscribed and forgot.
Worth noting my pihole is really only good for banner ads or ads that rely on DNS. YouTube ads require a clientside adblocker so far.
I forget about mine until I need to log into it to allow/block something, then I run my updates if I remember to think about it.
So like once every few months at best. Usually 2x/yr. Still works fine.
The blocklist automatically updates as long as you’re using maintained sources. It’s pretty easy tbh.
Hint: :q!
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