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Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

It really depends how you operate Windows. Almost every misbehavior has a way to turn it off, it's just a matter of finding it. Also, people need to use Firefox. With Firefox's tracking prevention, at this point my Pihole barely gets a workout. I reimplemented it recently on my network and it barely did anything, I am already controlling most of it at the PC or browser level.

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I don't think that counts if you either need questionable third party tools (usually also coming with ads) or extensive knowledge of the operating system to switch of this 'misbehaviour'. My mum is not able to operate Windows without ad and in-os-spam issues.

Pi-Hole is only good for what it does. You have full control (and overview) what your network is requesting and can block everything you don't need. The way I use it it takes time to operate. Like blocking most of whatever IoT devices are doing works like charm. Or whatever my smartTV was sending every other hour for no reason.

It doesn't block ads that are served on the same domains as the content, obviously. (Youtube, Twitch, ...) Only the client can filter those.

> Also, people need to use Firefox

I would, if Firefox would stop deteriorating. They are down to miniscule marketshare and continue redesigning their GUI, disabling features, preventing ad-blocking, launching pointless annoying services. Firefox of 2014 was a far better product than Firefox of 2022.

While I too mourn how Firefox has fared, it's still leaps and bounds better than using Chrome. Edge is maybe an acceptable alternative to Firefox, at least regarding tracking prevention, but you then have to deal with bull$&@? like what this post is about.

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