How I block all online ads
troubled.engineer
troubled.engineer
I also use DNS based filtering since I run my own Unbound instance, but it isn't really necessary with the above setup. It may be useful if you must absolutely have a smart TV or other such appliances, but considering that they have cameras and microphones, I will never connect such a device to the Internet anyway.
It would be a win win for everyone.
(people commenting about how a bad design choice in ACorp's flagship product AProduct led to the tragic death of ten labradoodle puppies.)
AD: Buy two AProduct, get one free — limited time offer! Woof! ACorp — your pup will love it!Sent from my iPhone
Thanks for the corroboration. I once got downvoted when I mentioned this
IME, the SoundCloud mode is less fragile
Heck I have ran modern firefox on tinycore on my 32 bit 1 gig ram mini dell laptop lol
That's good
"It's mostly a matter of using open platforms. With Firefox on the desktop and Fennec on Android (Graphene), you get full uBlock Origin support and therefore never see any ads anywhere, even on Youtube."
The "smartphone" is certainly not an "open platform"
For many years, including before Graphene even existed, if trying to use Firefox for Android without Graphene, either zero or only a small subset of ("curated") extensions were "supported" when not "logged in"
One could get "support" for all extensions by using Nightly. No need to "log in"
The situation may have changed recently but allowing it to persist for so many years like that is a good reminder of Mozilla's priorities and allegiances
Not to mention the ridiculous shibboleth required to change these settings away from the privacy-hostile defaults
"It may be useful if you must absolutely have a smart TV or other such appliances, but considering that they have cameras and microphones, I will never connect such a device to the Internet anyway."
Sounds intriguing. Any good articles on smart TVs with cameras or "other such appliances" with microphones conducting surveillance on purchasers
If there really are such TVs and appliances, then it makes sense to exercise control over whether they can connect to the internet and if so, what DNS data they can use
This cannot be done with uBlock Origin or NewPipe. Something else is needed, e.g., gateway/router firewall, DNS, forward proxy, etc.
The companies that distribute so-called "modern" web browsers are hyperfocused on data collection (Mozilla's telemetry alone is insane), surveillance and ad services as a core "business model". The software has been designed to access cameras and microphones. Mozilla receives millions of US dollars in payment from Google for user search data. The terms of this agreement selling users out are not public
The browser vendor can decide to stop "supporting" extensions such as "uBlock Origin" at any time, as we have seen with Google's Chrome, a project started by former Mozilla employees. The "smartphone" OS vendor can decide to stop allowing "apps" such as "NewPipe" at any time. As it happens the browser vendor, the OS vendor and the ad services vendor are all the same company. Mozilla is its business partner, Chrome was started by former Mozilla employees
1. It is reasonable to use what works until it doesn't, and to have alternatives when something stops working
I use multiple layers of defence against ads, call it an ad avoidance "stack" if that term appeals to you. uMatrix and uBlock Origin are only one layer and only work with popular browsers. Port forwarding on Android is another layer. DNS is another layer. Forward proxy is another layer. Gateway firewall is another layer. I control DNS for reasons other than ads but DNS is remarkably effective at preventing ads and tracking
In the long run, I would bet that DNS-based methods of avoiding data collection, surveillance and ads will remain viable the longest. DNS is older than the web, "smartphone apps" and the practice of using the web or "app stores" as data collection, surveillance and ad delivery platforms
This practice is enabled by and dependent on "popular web browsers" like Firefox and mobile OS like Android, controlled by corporations whose "business model" is support for onllne advertising, e.g., Mozilla Corporation sending search query data to Google LLC, who also collects data for advertising purposes via Android, in return for for millions of US dollars. This makes using Firefox or an Android fork a strange choice as a method for avoiding advertising.^1 These are the software projects, effectively controlled by trillion dollar corporations focused on data collection, surveillance and ad services, through which ads are delivered. These projects are a vehicle for online adverttising. DNS software projects,^2 at least the "good" ones, are not
2. NB. I'm not thinking of dnsmasq/PiHole. I'm not suggesting it's "bad
But agree, totally worth it if you at all value your time.
Only the earliest google music people are still grandfathered in at the insanely low rate. The rest of us have been "upgraded" to at least $14/mo.
Mostly watch via Android TV (NVidia Shield TV).
Probably a business decision that's made them a lot of money, well done.
Thank goodness for ReVanced.
Firefox mobile, m.youtube.com, "Video Background Play Fix" browser extension.
That's why I will never pay, no matter how much people glaze yt premium. I distinctly remember the day they took that simple feature away. uBlock and Vanced work fine, and it's also not hard to download to my media server for offline
I don't want to reward a company for shitty practices. What are they even doing at youtube besides changing the UI every 3 months and stuffing AI where it isn't wanted/needed.
At the bare minimum they need to enable the ability to blacklist entire channels, like I can easily do on my home setup. And ban AI videos without a label. Then they can have my $8
Content creators have paid sections in the video itself, the format optimises grabbing your attention, some legitimate-presenting channels are just real state for product placement...
You can’t win in that platform.
Yes, creators have paid sections but they are skippable (and note YouTube helps you skip with a little white dot in the UI[1]) and creators have a strong incentive to protect their credibility. They have an ongoing "relationship" with their viewer. Not so for the random companies that get to spam you with unskippable adverts for crypto scams or fat-free yoghurt in the freezer version.
[1]They don't like sponsored segments as they don't get a cut most of the time. They do have a programme for arranging sponsored segments via the platform, in which case they _do_ get a cut. I'm not sure if they still offer the little skip-helper dot in that case... Anyone know?
Is that a premium feature? How does it look? I don't remember ever seeing it (that said, SponsorBlock solves this).
> and creators have a strong incentive to protect their credibility.
I haven't seen this play out very much to be honest.
> I haven't seen this play out very much to be honest.
"Credibility" means "relative to the interests of their audience". Faux News has a completely different, almost inverse metric for "credibility" with their "Aliuns made the pirramids!" fanbase. CNN follows a more strict "if it bleeds it leads" policy to keep their audience believing them.
This comment is sponsored by Raid Shadow Legends
iOS Safari + uBlock Origin + Vinagre extension = no ads, free background play.
(I still use uBlock of course)
Being able to remove Shorts from the app and to revert Alphabet's many incoherent design decisions makes the whole thing usable.
These kinds of customisations should be standard for apps people use every day.
You need to also hide them from the feed and a few other places. You are not stupid; Revanced has too many options and the settings and large and confusing. It's easier to search "shorts" and toggle everything.
Most people would like to have a roof over their heads and eat once in a while.
How many links that you clicked on from HN today are asking for a subscription, and how many have you supported?
All I wanted years ago was an email address with my vanity domain. Had I only known I was shunting my whole family into a Bizarro Elgoog world...
Mass surveillance is one of the biggest threat to society that has come out of our industry, and is the biggest objection that many people have against modern adtech.
So how does YouTube Premium address this? Well, first you login to Google and let them associate your real name to everything you do online, not just what you do on YouTube. Then, you give them your credit card info, home address, and phone number because why not? On top of that, you get to foot the bill for all of this.
Uh, I'll continue to stay out of this.
I like his suggestion of VPN via cloud. I might set up something with wireguard or tailscale for that.
I don't really use youtube, but my family does, so If anyone knows a way to get a better ui experience as a google tv app I'd be keen to hear it?
This doesn't change the UI as such, but it auto-mutes ads, and auto-skips once the skip option is available. It's a bit of a funny thing to setup, but it works great once setup.
I don't use it much since I started using the ReVanced patched YouTube app, but it used to work well enough for casual usage.
https://medium.com/@lumenyx/isponsorblocktv-on-a-raspberry-p...
Both are superfluous if you have ublock, and pihole doesn't do anything for "native" ads like on twitch or youtube. The only benefit is that it blocks ads in apps that use third party ad SDKs.
They still accept updates to existing Manifest V2 extensions [1].
[1] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/extensions/...
I can't say I'm noticing any ads on Chrome, the lite ad blocker seems just as effective.
the freetube app has both of those extensions built in. you just have to enable them in the settings
sound dangerous...
>AdNauseam 'clicks' Ads by issuing an HTTP request to the URL to which they lead. In current versions this is done via an XMLHttpRequest (or AJAX request) issued in a background process. This lightweight request signals a 'click' on the server responsible for the Ad, but does so without opening any additional windows or pages on your computer. Further it allows AdNauseam to safely receive and discard the resulting response data, rather than executing it in the browser, thus preventing a range of potential security problems (ransomware, rogue Javascript or Flash code, XSS-attacks, etc.) caused by malfunctioning or malicious Ads. Although it is completely safe, AdNauseam's clicking behaviour can be de-activated in the settings panel.
https://github.com/dhowe/adnauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnause...
1. You don't need a separate browser extension for blocking cookie notices, Ublock Origin can do that just fine. You just need to enable the cookie notice filters in the settings (they are disabled by default).
2. AdAway on Android allows network-level blocking without resorting to a VPN (it's based on /etc/hosts). Though it does require root.
I didn't know it existed. FWIW, it's under Settings > Filter lists > Cookie notices.
However, I have found that using NextDNS as a private DNS server works and doesn't cause any problems like this.
Don't forget to give apps that fuck with you in the name of security 1-star reviews!
This works the same way as NextDNS on Android but is less customizeable.
Private industry invented these dialogs in the hope that you'll be too tired to deny anything.
[1] https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnause...
You might be thinking of TrackMeNot, which does use tabs (iirc).
Ordered in what I use the most - Fanfics, novels - profile 1. Netflix, others - profile 2. General browsing - profile 3.
You can get something like NextDNS for $18/year, which is probably less than what you pay for the power required to serve Pihole or Adguard Home, and you get enterprise level infrastructure for it, along with redundancy, and it works "everywhere".
Yes, you (probably) need a caching resolver at home, and that could be Pihole or Adguard, but going through hoops to setup Wireguard and have all DNS resolve over that, just to reach pihole at home, that sounds like overkill.
Anyway, In case it's not obvious, NextDNS is how i roll, using a "stupid" caching DNS resolver at home.
Host AdGuard on a VPS (same one as the VPN?). Then you can use it from everywhere.
For everybody else, $18/year vs $5/month for a VPS should be an easy choice.
If not, DNS4EU (https://www.joindns4.eu/) is free for personal use, and has no quota, and offers various endpoints for malware protection, adblocking, and other stuff.
Maybe that's what you ask: NextDNS has:
- 50+ blocklists ready to use (including Easylist, Adguard, HaGeZi, Energized). You enable the ones you wish to use
- Many privacy options you can enable, including Disguised Third-Party Trackers (TIP), CNAME flattening
- Many security options you can enable, including Cryptojacking, Google Safe Browsing, IDN Homograph attacks, Typosquatting, dynamic hostnames
- Ready-to-use application-based and category-based allowing/blocking
- Custom blocking options such as allowlists, denylists, blocking certain TLDs, custom rewrites
It also has:
- Option to "Bypass Age Verification"
- Option to keep logs (in EU, Swiss or US) or not
- Free to use up to 300,000 queries / month
- Multiple profiles for different clients
- Supports virtually all browsers and all OS, desktop and mobile, either via its official app, configuration profile (iOS), or IPv4, IPv6, DNS-over-TLS/QUIC, DNS-over-HTTPS
> Can you setup custom filters on the free solution?
No, but as the other person replying said, there's a huge range of built in filters and I've never felt any need to customize them.
EDIT: just spent a few minutes looking over the DNS4EU website. I can't see any configuration options at all. They just have 4 basic levels (standard, child protection, ad block, or unfiltered). So it appears less useful than NextDNS. Where did you see the ability to add custom filters?
It's basically setup so that i have my internal machines registered in NextDNS as rewrites, and Wireguard is setup to route anything for my internal RFC-1918 network, ie. 192.168.1.0/24, so when NextDNS returns 192.168.1.5 for "host.mydomain.com", it will go over wireguard.
The advantage is that i can keep the tunnel up 24/7, and it has very little impact on battery life as normal requests simply go over the internet.
I also wrote here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46191045
The biggest hassle was making sure the world can't hit it (though it's not UDP 53 so it's not an amplification vector anyway) but only local NZ IPs, which I did with GeoFilterig on my router.
That's why i setup a local caching resolver. RTT to NextDNS in Denmark is ~10ms, and RTT to my local caching resolver is 1-2ms, so yes, it's quicker, but my caching resolver is essentially just what my router offers (Unifi), with NextDNS as upstream (DNS over TLS).
"I just have an always-on AdGuardHome"
I've self hosted for 20 years, i honestly can't be bothered anymore. The power consumption of self hosted hardware alone costs more than the equivalent, better, service in the cloud. NextDNS is $18/year, thats 51 kWh at €0.35/kWh. 5W for a year is 43.8 kWh, which is roughly what a Raspberry Pi 3/4 uses, so for just €2.5/year i can have enterprise hardware and massive redundancy with zero operational risk compared to running on a single RPi at home.
Yes, i'm aware you can run better hardware with more services, but that really only makes the problem worse, both in terms of power consumption, but also in terms of TCO with hardware costs, as well as cybersecurity.
For most people, running in the cloud is cheaper than self hosting. If you have less than 5-6TB of data, the cloud will also be cheaper. After that the math starts going in the favor of self hosting, but year for year the amount of data you can store in the cloud cheaper than at home keeps growing. Yes, the cloud prices increase, but so does the price of harddrives and other hardware.
"but only local NZ IPs, which I did with GeoFilterig on my router."
I know geofiltering is usually security by obscurity, but it does keep the worst bots away, and i used to use it as well (when i self hosted). It cut down dramatically on the various "drive by shootings" by random bots constantly pinging various ports.
I would add one more useful tool though: A user-agent switcher[1]. There are still some websites that insist you must use Chrome (or sometimes Edge). They will block you if you try to use them with Firefox, even though they work perfectly well and sometimes even better on Firefox than they do on Chrome. A user-agent switcher gives you the option to simply uninstall Chrome for good.
e.g. My ISP provides a website for streaming live TV (e.g. sports) that claims to be incompatible with Firefox, but actually runs better (i.e. fewer glitches) on it than it does on Chrome. However, it refuses to load on Firefox unless you use a user-agent switcher.
Why do people write websites that refuse to run based on user-agent checks? By all means, warn users that you couldn't be arsed to test things on more than one browser, but why go that extra mile to brick your site when other browsers probably support it quite well?
[1]https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/user-agent-st...
I can’t stand those in-video intros or sponsored promos, where I’m suddenly pitched a random VPN or productivity app.
PiHole is popular but IMO not worth the effort when the above are so cheap. There are free ad blocking DNS servers, but they aren't customizable.
Or do you not import any lists into nexdns?
On my personal computer, I don't remember ever running into this, but if I did I'd just override resolv.conf temporarily.
You can also just whitelist the domain(s) too via oneclick actions in both systems, which was my initial caveat that you can't do that using public adblocking DNS.
https://github.com/time4tea-net/py-hole/
You can run it on your openwrt router - see readme. Its just a python script that updates a file that dnsmasq uses. No funny business, you are in charge of everything.
Disclaimer: author of said script.
Only caveat is it doesn’t block ads served by the content provider itself e.g. some streaming services, but from what I hear those are difficult to block with any approach.
Sometimes this isn’t available.
I would like to support Daring Fireball (a publication I read a lot) but the only way is to buy an ad slot for $11K which seems like a scam to both the viewer and the advertiser.
The advertiser isn’t getting any ROAS (since we are blocking the ads) and since the ads are annoying and repetitive, the viewers would just go elsewhere.
I wish more creators would have a “remove ads” tier or an alternative membership tier as a different way to support their content rather than ads.
(A less tongue-in-cheek option would be to email John, say that you’re blocking ads, and ask if you can donate instead. If enough people ask he might put up a form?)
If Daring Fireball had this membership subscription model and not selling highly and questionably expensive ad slots I would definitely subscribe, even if the price would be $20 a month or $200 a year. (I would argue he can make more than he charges for ads does already given this model.)
But $11K (a week!) is outrageous to support Daring Fireball.
AFAIK, Daring Fireball never runs these tracking ad networks with tons of flashing and annoying ads. It does one tiny graphical ad on the web page and has a weekly sponsor post, both of which can be easily ignored. The graphical ad does not even appear in the full RSS feed.
To support Daring Fireball, you can use the links to the weekly sponsor if that product is of interest to you. Once or twice in a year or so, there may be posts with Amazon affiliate links (with full disclosure), which you can use if you want. Other than that, you can share the posts and have more people read it. That in turn could potentially help with the above mentioned aspects.
For me an ad is an ad, in graphical or text form and I very much didn't ask for it.
I feel it is psychologically trying to convince me to buy or make me be aware about something I don't want or need and very much not want this ruin my flow of consuming content.
On his links Daring Fireball IS tracking, they all do tracking in the URL of the sponsored post otherwise it doesn't make sense for the sponsor to pay $11K (a week!) for the spot.
> It does one tiny graphical ad on the web page and has a weekly sponsor post, both of which can be easily ignored. The graphical ad does not even appear in the full RSS feed.
I mean, yes I could ignore them, but would massively prefer if these ads didn't exist at all, I have no interest in anything that is being advertised there. Luckily Ublock Origin blocks Daring Fireball ads by default and not sure if his advertisers would be happy about this, but if I spend $11K a week on ads to find most people block them by default, I don't think I would bother wasting another ad slot.
To be fair maybe it is a sign that instead of ads, a membership, patreon or whatever would be much more sustainable, freeing, less scammy and more profitable than running junk ads that people don't want.
You could always buy a Stratechery subscription - which is great by the way. Some of that money goes to Gruber for the Dithering podcast.
But Gruber is a famously self described bad business person for a content creator. He never tries to be an early reviewer when press embargoes are over for hardware. He claims to never look at his server logs and got rid of Google Analytics ages ago.
His podcast schedule is erratic.
I have no interest for anything sold in ads in their RSS and I assume they are tracking in the links that you click too (otherwise why spend all $11K for no results?)
> He claims to never look at his server logs and got rid of Google Analytics ages ago.
That is a good start, hopefully he should consider switching to a community supported model rather than rely on advertisers.
Then their content can just go away tbh. This isn't some big ethical dilemma either.
Either find a way to make content that doesn't rely on ads, or stop making content. If the whole ad-funded internet disappeared tomorrow morning, would it really matter?
Here is the block management setup I personally use regularly:
Desktop
* DNS blocking is active via NextDNS.
* I use Ungoogled Chromium as my primary browser.
* I use the uBlock ad-blocking extension along with its filters.
* The SponsorBlock extension is very useful for skipping sponsored segments within YouTube videos.
Mobile
* DNS blocking is active via NextDNS.
* To block ads in Safari, I activate ad-blocking in Safari through the free Firefox Focus app.
* I use the YouTube app via AltStore. It is a nice feature that it also includes the SponsorBlock extension.
If you'd like, I can publish a comprehensive ad-blocking guide on the Ahmet Çadırcı https://ahmetcadirci.com/ page.
I've bee trying these and alternatives in FF via LibRedirect for years. I keep on wondering if it's just me but I have to babysit the setup and cycle through instances every so often.
I regularly read https://daringfireball.com and sick of their ads showing up in my RSS feed.
It is bad enough and distracting that ads show up on the site (thankfully Firefox and ublock origin does the job already) but on RSS blocking ads is impossible.
I mostly just avoid subscribing to any feeds with ads. (Or pay for the ad-free feeds.)
You'd need a VM to safely contain any exploits, although you're probably safe from 0days if you're just doing some run of the mill ad clicking. Nobody is burning a 6-7 figure 0day on a public ad network, when they need to save that for targeted attacks like politicians/journalists, so keeping your browser reasonably up to date will be sufficient.
Is that anything to do with ads? I've always read that the padding is to make it copyrightable.
Advertisers on the other hand will pay for nothing, yes. Some of them are small businesses. I wonder if there’s a way to click on big corp ads only...
Edit: ¹ – added scare quotes, see https://github.com/dhowe/AdNauseam/wiki/FAQ#how-does-adnause...
It’s always been ironic to me that a Privacy browser is dependent on source code primarily controlled by a company that derives the majority of its revenue from ads… exactly what the browser itself was spun off to shield its users against.
Now I am back to Brave and very happy. Almost no ads, super fast, doesn't crash or hang.
> NOTE: Dvelopment has stopped. The newer dev.clombardo.dnsnet continues development.
DNSNet
What is needed is some way to block Amazon Prime ads (and the like), these come from the same Amazon url and currently are unstoppable.
For example IMDb. And proxying over mitmproxy actually breaks the whole app, because they do certificate pinning.
AdGuard's log shows nondescript servers and suddenly a lot of IPv6 connections and then ads :(
For example, Shopify hates ublock and will sometimes not load apps at all
The ad domains straight up don't resolve at all and never get loaded. I don't have any adblock/ublock, so the websites almost never could detect if I block ads or not.
I’ve just been watching streams after they’re done so that I can get rid of them that way
Edit: nvm author mentions vpns as a solution
I run 1Blocker + NextDNS and I basically don’t see ads anywhere. Not even on YouTube.
firefox sold out on their users quit using them https://youtube.com/shorts/FObvkFtr2ZU
The VPN-based "solution" is basically as realistic as disabling JavaScript. Extremely limiting.
I have used them both paid and free and they are not good. I will pick just one point - support. It's pathetic. Maybe because it's non existent. I stopped paying for it, started using free, then removed it altogether.
uBlock Origin really is that good as others are saying. I haven't really needed anything else. Ads in other apps? Well, that's a hit or miss but then a lot of my finance/investment related apps anyway don't work if I use any ad blocking on local network or device label, sadly. Tweaking around it is how I needed support with NextDNS and then realised I've been paying for something with essentially no support.
I'm pretty aggressive with the block lists I have selected and expect to fiddle with it lots, but I have a second (much more "reasonable") profile that family uses and it works great (still catches a huge amount of stuff that browser adblockers miss) despite never needing any fiddling. It's been great for me.
Mobile: Blockada to prevent apps from reaching their ad servers. NewPipe.
Desktop: Freetube.
uBO has the bonus to have an element picker that I use to remove the empty areas where ads would show. I do it for sites that I use often. I also remove some useless menus and headers. I particularly hate sticky ones.
I spend more time telling others about uBlock Origin, SponsorBlock and ReVanced.