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Comment by happybuy | Hacker News Reader

As a developer of an ad blocker[1] our stats would seem to back up what Plausible has found:

- Despite having equivalent desktop (macOS) and mobile (iOS) apps, most of our users (> 75%) use the app primarily on desktop

- Most users say the key reason for use is for privacy protection; even with Safari providing some inbuilt privacy tracking protection

- Our app is focused on providing a simple 'set and forget' ad blocking approach; so you would think the key audience would be less tech savvy users. However a large proportion of users are tech-inclined and knowledgeable users.

- A lot of tech heavy websites are some of the worst offenders in terms of tracker usage and advertising. For example, The Verge can load 3.5x faster simply by using an ad blocker that blocks the on-page trackers and ads[2]

[1] https://www.magiclasso.co/

[2] https://www.magiclasso.co/insights/difference-adblocking/

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It appears that Magiclasso is not open source. That being the case, how can anyone trust your claim that "Magic Lasso Adblock doesn't see or have access to any of your web pages or browsing history?"

The Safari content blocking API makes sure of that. Content blockers can only provide a list of rules for content to block (based on URL regexes, CSS selectors, etc) but can't actually access the content itself.

My experience running a web server also backs this up. The number of GET requests to the back end is around twice as much as I see in Google Analytics.

Are there any ad blockers for iOS that can block ads in google search results? Or is that kind of thing essentially impossible?

I use 1Blocker which blocks those (checked just now), I don’t see why other apps could not do the same.

AdGuard is the best option, plus it’s free.

How do you collect your analytics?

On our website we have no analytics or trackers installed at all. The app usage statistics come via the Apple App Store. App Store users can opt out of these stats via an OS-level setting.

Opt out? It should be an opt in system in a for-privacy app.

> Opt out? It should be an opt in system in a for-privacy app.

I think it's pretty clear that they are discussing an App Store policy, not analytics collected by their app.

Apple does ask you when you set your phone up if you want to share analytics or not. I consider that opt-in, since you're given the choice up front.

Great, now it's equally as privacy-friendly as Windows 10 /s

I'm curious how does this compare/align with 1Blocker ?

Can you make this for Android?

On Android you can use Firefox + uBlock Origin.

In addition to uBO, I also use TrackerControl.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.kollnig.missioncontrol.f...

This is the way. Although the built-in blocker in "strict" mode does a darn good job as well with a rare site breakage

Add Blokada + Newpipe to the mix as well.

I don't recall ever having heard about Blokada before, but looking it up now it doesn't seem recommended: https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/merge_requests/8536

(I created that merge request)

Blokada's UI is without peer and so it makes for a very good "just works" for the majority (in fact, from what I know, it is the most downloaded DNS-based content blocker on Android by far).

However, it is disappointing that some of their decision-making is found wanting: https://www.reddit.com/r/privacytoolsIO/comments/papgeq/any_...

Forgive the questions, but you seem to be a good person to ask.. How does Blokada actually work? Its FAQ claims it:

> prevents apps and browsers installed on your device from sending your private data (known as tracking fingerprints) to the Internet.

Is it doing some kind of packet inspection?

As a secondary layer of blocking I use DNS66 which intercepts DNS requests and fails them for blacklisted domains, by installing itself as a virtual VPN - essentially a cooked /etc/hosts for Android.

Would Blokada work alongside that?

> prevents apps and browsers installed on your device from sending your private data (known as tracking fingerprints) to the Internet.

For now, Blokada's utility is limited to DNS-based content blocking. It cannot and does not prevent most forms of fingerprinting.

> Is it doing some kind of packet inspection?

Yes, only DNS packet inspection, but even for the only thing it does, it is clumsy: It leaks DNS requests; that is, Blokada does not trap all DNS traffic on port 53, and it does not handle DNS queries sent over TCP. DNS66 has these same issues, too.

> As a secondary layer of blocking I use DNS66 which intercepts DNS requests and fails them for blacklisted domains, by installing itself as a virtual VPN - essentially a cooked /etc/hosts for Android.

Blokada uses the same trick (I mean, core parts of Blokada 4 code-base does bear similarities with DNS66 which preceded it... Blokada 5 however was re-written in Rust).

> Would Blokada work alongside that?

No, it cannot. But: Apps that support "DNS proxying" (like Nebulo [0]) can. It is quite an involved setup. I'd simply use Nebulo over DNS66, as it is not only more capable but also encrypts DNS traffic unlike Blokada 4 or DNS66.

> ...but you seem to be a good person to ask..

A disclosure, rather something to keep in mind: I have been accused of spreading fud by the Blokada lead developer and using it to "market" a "competitor" app I co-develop. In my defense, it wasn't / isn't fud what I spread, unless fud === uncomfortable truth.

[0] https://github.com/ch4t4r/Nebulo (fixed link, thanks u/NoGravitas)

Github link for Nebulo appears wrong: is this the correct one?

https://github.com/Ch4t4r/Nebulo

Would you mind to suggest any alternative to Blokada? Thanks!

https://github.com/offa/android-foss#-ad-blocker and https://github.com/offa/android-foss#-firewall

Thanks for the info!

And uMatirx, but Firefox put stop to that one.

Pretty sure Firefox did no such thing, instead IIRC the developer (gorhill) of both addons (uMatrix and uBO) realized that uMatrix was pretty much redundant given the options available in uBO and thus archived uMatrix.

We had a HN discussion where users brought up situations where uB could not replace uM.

IMO what really killed uM was major API changes by chrome and Firefox.

Google has no incentive to support effective ad blocking on platforms they control (Android and Chrome). This has made us reluctant to develop for or invest time on these platforms – the platform owner would be working against what we would be trying to achieve.

What? Apple is even worse. There was a big cry when Google wanted to nuter adblockers API but Apple have done exactly the same thing. You fell into a pr stunt. Apple doesn't care for privacy. Just look at how they scan you pictures..

All prominent smartphone OS come with an advertising id. It wouldn't have to be this way. I think Android is open source done wrong to be honest.

But yes, in the end they are both crappy vendors.

No, other cloud providers scan all the pictures you upload. Apple does a careful private set intersection (partially on the client, partially on the server) on all the pictures you upload to collect strictly less data than other cloud providers.

Apple literally built an API for ad-blocking. How is that worse?

Are you referring to the "content blocker" API? Because that basically forces plug-ins to supply a list of blocked domains. Just like Google's upcoming changes. Neither allow you to run your own engine for blocking like what uBlock Origin does.

Why is it important to have "privacy" from someone selling me a new video streaming service, but not important to fight against censorship and policing of content by tech giants?

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