I use all kinds of services and devices that send a wealth of data back to the usual suspects: Google, Apple, Microsoft and the Zuckburger. Does PiHole (does it have to be installed on a Pi, or can it work with FreeBSD/pfSense?) adequately block these trackers and miners? What’s the best (in terms of cost and features) hardware to run PiHole and pfSense on?
How hard is it to keep track of what domains and IP addresses the trackers send their data back to? Would I have to constantly add new addresses and domains to PiHole’s blacklist? If I block these trackers, are these services still usable? For example, if I block Facebook telemetry, would my Oculus Quest 2 continue functioning?
EDIT: Oh and one final question. Is it possible to somehow use PiHole to protect mobile devices, and not just those living solely in my house?
If you are running pfsense, that has it’s own similar blocking software that is arguably better than pihole. but no, it does not need to be run on a pi. I think there is a docker image available.
I have a quest in the household and it’s been hit or miss depending on the domain that’s being blocked. The quest talks to FB A LOT!!!
It would ping a handful of fb domains and I would try to block them but some stuff on the quest would stop working. I ended up doing trial and error what I could block just enough to keep it running.
You can also set blocking of domains by device. So only allowing those fb servers for the quest but blocked for everyone else.
It blocks anything on the network when set up correctly. Once you leave the house, it no longer will protect/block things for you.
Yes, it is. You can have an OpenVPN client on your machine that loops back the connection through PiHole before getting to the internet.
It might even be possible to set PiHole as a public DNS server and set up that way for mobile devices but it’s not recommended for security reasons by the creators aswell.