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> - Android doesn't provide fine-grained permissions control or root access, so users can't block ads.

One caveat here - Google devices are probably some of the most allowing of root access and full device ownership - easily unlocked bootloaders basically allow it to be a one button process.

Some manufacturers make you put your device on a shitlist with them before they'll give you a key to unlock the bootloader and root it - others, like Apple, won't allow you to at all.

Once you are rooted, you do have full ability to block everything and get fine-grained permission control via XPrivacy for example. Android devices are actually some of the best here mostly due to strong community support. You can't even get this control if you want it on many mobile devices these days.

I've never seen a way to root my phones without some risk of turning them into bricks. How would I quickly and safely get root access to a Galaxy Note III without risking the destruction of the device?

Samsung is an example of a manufacturer that doesn't make it easy. Oppo, One Plus and Google (LG) all have very easy to unlock bootloaders that have "official" instructions from the manufacturer (and it's two commands away).

Can you still brick it? Yes. Is it likely if you type the two commands as you're told to on the website? No.

Thanks, I will look into one of those phones when I replace the Galaxy Note.

The Note 3 is not a Google-made device, it's made by Samsung. Google's own Nexus and Pixel devices allow it in a single button press, I'm unsure of other manufacturers except OnePlus which does the same as Google. As I said in my post, some devices are a lot better than others when it comes to this.

Also, bricking doesn't just happen, if you understand what you're doing you'll be fine. That "some risk" isn't random, it's in the case that you do something incredibly stupid. Get a custom recovery on there as soon as possible and you can pretty much recover anything.

Thanks for the info. I will check out those devices when I replace this one.

This is simply not true. I've spent 3 years flashing and messing with my phone in many ways.I've hard bricked it only once. When it was updating my phone froze. I didn't do anything stupid. It simply froze and messed with all partitions. It's hard to fuck your phone but it's a possibility.

Sorry, but "froze and messed with all partitions" makes it sound more like you fucked up and flashed the wrong rom or something - flashing an update should never mess with all partitions - only /system and /data really.

Not anymore.

On Android devices with unlocked bootloaders, a great amount of apps won't work.

Android Pay, Snapchat, Pokémon Go, etc.

Google has tried to fight rooting as much as possible.

Use magisk or suhide and they'll work just fine. When you have access to the bootloader, there's nothing they can do to stop you - any attempt will ultimately be futile.

Actually, they now check a fuse on the device to verify if you unlocked the bootloader – if you have, on some devices, safetynet will fail.

So, yes, they can do something: blow fuses in the fucking system.

From what I've seen, there are no actual cases of this in practice at least not on Google devices - Google devices don't even have such a fuse. Maybe some Samsung stuff - but that's an easy fix, don't buy from Samsung. Also, it does not fail SafetyNet even on those Samsung devices, just some Samsung-specific stuff.

From what I've seen the only mention of such fuses on Google devices is one that enables secure boot from factory and forces you to run the unlock command as I mentioned to reflash your bootloader - nothing to do with safetynet or anything similar.

Let me know if I'm missing a device which does actually do this. Yes, it's theoretically possible, but requires sufficient crypto hardware and protection to make it significant and it'd be a significant shift in direction for Google to go this route currently in my opinion.

Of course a full safetynet emulation that would spoof the check as a different device would also be an option... but it'd be a pretty big undertaking, but one which I'm sure would happen if this ever became a remotely significant threat.

And yet Apple introduced a first-class ad blocking mechanism into iOS that even works in 3rd party apps (using SFSafariViewController). There are dozens of ad blocking apps available on the App Store, which are much more accessible to the average user than having to root your device and install apps that have full root privileges.

Yeah, that's definitely a step in the right direction, I certainly wouldn't say that Google does nothing to protect their interests in advertising - especially given their recent actions on the Chrome store with AdNauseum.

However, what I'm trying to get at is that, for example on iOS you still can't block in-app non-Safari ads at all. On Android you can do that if you want to, and a lot more, you can also block specific connections, block device-specific identifiers, APN lists, accelerometers, wake state, etc - it's a better compromise for someone concerned about privacy than other platforms even with this considered right now.

I would guess that is because Apple doesn't rely on advertising revenue. If they block some ads they just hurt revenue for their competitors.

> Google devices are probably some of the most allowing of root access and full device ownership

Did you hear about SafetyNet? https://koz.io/inside-safetynet/

Someone else already commented on it, see that thread. It's trivially bypassed using current tools.

Here's another one I spotted recently:

- Android apps like YouTube and Google News use a built-in browser frame to show navigated-to web pages, rather than opening them in an external browser. The built-in frame uses Chrome tech, without add-ons. They used to allow you to open links by default in an external browser, but not any more.

> The built-in frame uses Chrome tech, without add-ons

To block ads in Chrome Custom Tabs [1][2] you can either use Chromer [3] to change the custom tab provider to Brave [4] or use the article mode in Chromer.

[1] https://developer.chrome.com/multidevice/android/customtabs

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/5ahlfq/dev_psa_chr...

[3] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=arun.com.chrom...

[4] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brave.brow...

Just a happy user and not affiliated, but Brave was a hallelujah-moment for me. Never got Firefox to be especially fluid, not even close to Chrome. But Brave, IIUC, takes Chromium and adds some adblocking. It's not perfect, and some ads makes its way in, but it removes quite a lot while still being very snappy. To the best of my knowledge and experience, I can really recommend it.

Now I just hope that Brave doesn't turn out to be too evil :S.

That's for faster loading, and can be disabled.

How?

Ad-Away (installable via F-Droid if you are rooted) allows you to block ads at the hosts-file level, which will work in Chrome and in other apps that display ads.

Before anyone chews me out, as this effectively renders many free apps equivalent to their premium (ad-free) counterparts, I usually pay for said premium versions to compensate their developers.

The catch here is that it isn't as good - using uBlock in FF for Android for example will properly block all ad frames.

Using adaway or a pi-hole for that matter will not - they will only cause ad loading to fail (in some cases) - which sometimes results in frames showing errors on the page instead of a clean rendering of nothing with ad divs removed.

Personally I wind up using several methods - AdAway to kill most app ads, uBlock for web and Xposed to kill YouTube ads since the hosts-based methods seem to work rather poorly for them as their subdomains change all the time.

>Xposed to kill YouTube ads since the hosts-based methods seem to work rather poorly for them as their subdomains change all the time.

That's weird, I didn't get any Youtube ads in quite a long time, and only use AdAway.

DNS-level blocking is, IMO, only a second line of defense. Nice to have for all those devices and applications where you cannot have a proper ad/tracking/malware blocker.

Belt ans suspenders.

Defense in depth.

> You have to buy another computer that doesn't have root access.

It's called HDCP, and I believe it's a combination of your GPU, monitor and cable between it supporting it. Netflix and most other online streaming services do this too. It has nothing to do with root access.