[HN Gopher] Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole
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Ad blocking with Raspberry Pi and Pi-hole
Author : christian_fei
Score : 41 points
Date : 2020-05-04 20:53 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cri.dev)
(TXT) w3m dump (cri.dev)
| bberrry wrote:
| I wish it were more effective in removing Youtube ads on my kids'
| iPads, but I understand it's a tall order. At least it gets rid
| of ads in most other apps.
| BuckRogers wrote:
| Try Microsoft Edge. Its built in ad blocker works for me with
| Youtube on my iPhone.
|
| I block ads at the application layer, DNS based ad blocking
| doesn't really do it anymore and can create another
| troubleshooting surface to consider when it breaks something.
| netsharc wrote:
| If you had said Android I would've suggested NewPipe:
| https://newpipe.schabi.org/
| christian_fei wrote:
| could be the right fit:
| https://github.com/kboghdady/youTube_ads_4_pi-hole
| bberrry wrote:
| Thank you! I'll give it a try
| kd913 wrote:
| Please do note that Android appears to be quite weird in regards
| to accepting network set DNS.
|
| My observations so far have been that Android tends to ignore any
| DNS set by either the network via DHCP or statically set. Android
| instead probes the gateway for 8.8.8.8, and happily uses that
| instead.
|
| The only way I have been able to solve this has been to setup a
| VPN (I prefer wireguard) on the pihole. Android seems to accept
| this.
|
| The above in combination with say a DDNS hostname means that I
| now have a permanent adblocked VPN on my android phone which
| isn't too bad.
| greencar wrote:
| > Use it for ad-blocking in your home network and to finally
| browse the web, watch videos etc. without annoying ads.
|
| It doesn't really do this as well as a browser adblocker, YouTube
| ads for example can't effectively be blocked with pihole
| schwartzworld wrote:
| it's not really fair to compare it to an in-browser adblocker
| that way, especially since using them isn't mutually exclusive.
| PiHole blocks ads whether you are in a browser or not, an
| instant benefit for everybody on your WiFi network.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| In fact, one of the best things about Pi-hole network wide
| blocking is the removal of those 5 to 10 second otherwise
| unskippable ads in apps.
| 416chad wrote:
| Exactly this. Ads in places like news apps disappear, a big
| plus for pihole.
| christian_fei wrote:
| there seems to be a solution:
| https://github.com/kboghdady/youTube_ads_4_pi-hole
| strenholme wrote:
| I actually have been doing some work with MaraDNS to have the
| ability to have a pi-hole sized blacklist. The main source of pi-
| hole's blacklist is this Git repo:
|
| https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
|
| That is about 60,000 hosts, so I added MaraDNS support to have up
| to 500,000 blacklisted names. Since it's a speed-optimized (not
| size-optimized) cache, each element takes about a kilobyte of
| memory, so a blacklist this size takes about 60 megabytes of
| memory for MaraDNS to store (on a modern Core i7 7600U processor,
| it only takes about two seconds to load all 60,000 elements in to
| memory), but it's very rapid to use.
|
| The script to take that blacklist and convert it in to a MaraDNS
| compatible format is here:
|
| https://github.com/samboy/MaraDNS/blob/master/deadwood-githu...
|
| There are ways to make the memory footprint of the blacklist
| smaller, but this was a quick and simple way to implement a
| medium sized blacklist. Finding ways to have, say, 10 million
| blacklist elements with a small memory footprint is left as an
| exercise for the reader.
|
| My current project is to make a proper Docker container for
| MaraDNS.
| CoolGuySteve wrote:
| What is the optimization gained by having 1KB cache slots when
| the cacheline size on Intel and ARM is typically 64 bytes?
| Havoc wrote:
| There are dockerised versions as well if you happen to have a
| docker stack somewhere in your home
| christian_fei wrote:
| i like the pi-hole installer a lot, since it's a damn one-
| liner. i was amazed by its simplicity
| dastx wrote:
| Another alternative is AdGuard Home. They've come a long way
| since they announced it. I switched to AdGuard Home some 6 months
| ago and it has been great.
| lordnacho wrote:
| I'm looking for a way to combine the adblocking with a VPN
| switcher that takes eg NordVPN and routes all my home traffic
| through a variety of tunnels (they provide a load of openVPN
| files). Is there a ready-made way to do this? The idea is for
| anyone in the house to be protected by both the adblock and the
| VPN.
| aesh2Xa1 wrote:
| I'm not aware of an "out of the box" solution, but maybe paying
| for NordVPN or similar will do this for you.
|
| VPNs typically tunnel your packets thru an encrypted connection
| to a gateway somewhere else on the internet.
|
| Ad blockers point your DNS to a resolver that blacklists ad
| domains. You can use a VPN and still set your DNS to whatever
| you'd like. What works best for you will depend on your threat
| model (or just privacy concern, as that other term sounds
| loaded).
| doctoboggan wrote:
| Does anyone have any good suggestions for blacklists? I've only
| been using the default and am wondering if I should add some more
| items to the list.
| christian_fei wrote:
| some blacklists i found:
|
| - https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/update-the-best-blocking-
| lis...
|
| - https://github.com/chadmayfield/my-pihole-blocklists
| brenden2 wrote:
| I use pi-hole, and it's great, but for browsers you still need
| something like uBlock Origin installed to properly block ads. The
| thing I like about pi-hole is it also blocks a long list of
| trackers that are bundled by various mobile SDKs. There's no way
| to block those with iOS or Android, except at the network level.
| ananonymoususer wrote:
| Pi-Hole is a great project, and it's not limited to running on a
| Raspberry Pi either. I've got it running as a (x86-64 Ubuntu) VM
| in the same hypervisor that hosts my firewall. It's lightweight,
| super responsive, and provides great statistics on what it is
| doing.
| jedberg wrote:
| Is anyone successfully using PiHole with non-technical users?
|
| My main concern with putting PiHole on my home network is that
| for example my mother in law might not understand that she can't
| get to some web page because it's being ad-blocked, nor would she
| be able to go to the web admin page and temporarily unblock it.
|
| Even as a technical person sometimes it takes a while to figure
| out that a page isn't working because of adblock or pi-hole.
|
| How do people deal with this?
| css wrote:
| I have an iOS shortcut that hits the disable endpoint, so they
| have a button on their phone they tap that will disable it for
| 30 minutes at a time.
| christian_fei wrote:
| what an automation!
| jedberg wrote:
| Clever!
|
| They would still have to know that the site isn't working
| because of blocking, but I suppose developing the habit of
| "website doesn't work, press the magic button and try again"
| isn't so bad.
|
| If I do PiHole just for myself I think I'll add this button.
| Thanks!
| LynxInLA wrote:
| Any chance you can share that shortcut? I currently have a
| bookmark that my roommate can hit, but a shortcut would be
| better.
| css wrote:
| I use a modified version of this with hard coded times so
| there is no user input: https://routinehub.co/shortcut/2904
| marrone12 wrote:
| Yep, it's for this reason I had to turn off the pi-hole. Random
| sites that my wife or friends would use wouldn't work,
| especially log-ins or authentications for various sites, and
| there's no easy to surface bypass ability. So now I just rely
| on browser based blocking.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| For my home desktop browser, I just use uBlock Origin to block
| ads.
|
| But for my phone, I set up a PiHole running on an EC2 instance
| and VPN into it from my phone. Blocks ads in everything, not just
| my web browser. The VPN is configured to only tunnel DNS lookups,
| not traffic, so the EC2 bandwidth bill is minimal.
| christian_fei wrote:
| interesting approach
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(page generated 2020-05-04 23:00 UTC)