I think it’s worth mentioning the open source project adaway on Android does this very well and keeps the maintenance to a minimum, however it requires root.
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I will add from myself …
Personally, I use ublock origin and privacy badger and noscript in both Firefox and Chromium. Does it mean that they spy on me …
When it comes to filtering based on the HOST list. Personally, I used both the method of editing the HOST file on the machines as well as the central blocking on the DNS server.
My PI-Hole uses two NS, one from ISP, and as ns2 I use Cloudflare. In both cases, use DNSSEC. Also uses the StevenBlack list as one of many.
For the HOST edition and regular updates, I personally recommend “HostsMan” definitely more comfortable than manual changes.
However, an even more convenient solution is to transfer all of your machines to PI-Hole or use pfblocker.
The problem with blocking at the dns level is definitely less effective than directly in the browser. Not every unwanted content can be effectively blocked on a domain basis. And even if the domain is blocked, we can still observe anomalies on the site because some of the code has been displayed but the content of the advertisement itself has not been downloaded.
I personally block unwanted content in the first place at the dns level using PI-Hole (2,718,896 blocked domains) which works without any problems on 8 cores and 2GB RAM. The next step to blocking in the browser.
I would recommend those who can run PI-Hole or pfblocker on pfsense / or any dns server you have to use just this method instead of the individual HOST editing per machine. Definitely more comfortable imho.
Of course, you can also block it at the firewall level. I did it once too …
They actually do, they even state it wenn you install the addon in the browser.
They state that they need acces to all your browser traffic to get able to work.
So in other words they also have acces to sites you visit etc.
And it’s pretty likely that they also collect some for analytics etc.
They need to make money somehow right?
Stating to need access to the traffic (which seems normal for the type of blocking they do) is a completely different thing from assuming that they send everything they see to a server somewhere else.
And i don’t see the money argument. There are tons of projects we all use from Developers, that don’t cost money AND don’t collect your data.
I don’t say i have definitiv information one way or the other. But i’m still giving the the benefit of the doubt for now.
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Well they basically need analytics of some kind to keep their application up to date right?
I’m not sure how they would be able to that without gathering some data from the users.
There is money in analytics of adblocking is what Mistery is getting at. I would not be surprised if the authors not only used it to keep their application up to date but also sold information about what users thought is acceptable. is this bad? mmm kind sorta no sorta yes… its a grey area. While this isnt confirmed you can never know what they do with data they harvest
They do need access to actually block the ads. That doesn’t mean they collect analytics or send any telemetry back up, and in fact they specifically denied doing that. They do not need “to make money somehow”, it’s an open-source project and is completely unfunded. They don’t even accept donations.
Ublock Origin is a browser addon. Your browser updates it from Google or Mozilla, like every other browser addon. They do not harvest any data. It isn’t a grey area, that would be completely unacceptable.
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Ghostery does? Your argument that it is an addon so it cant collect isnt very valid. Now saying the author is trustworthy and we have proof in it not phoning home via firewall logs… thats a different story
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wait how do we enable this?
afaik ghostery was a different story though.
Dude that’s the feature they were going to ad as default but pulled back at the last moment due to privacy concerns.
I didn’t answer your question.
The bottom line is ghostery proved no matter the addon that analytics could be built into the backend in some way making plugins still less trustworthy than homegrown solutions
Yes, but also that can be said of any project even open source. Who audits all of the opensource code daily ? There is a certain element of trust required.
That would be an invalid argument if I had made it, which I didn’t.
Yes, the author is trustworthy and plenty of people have packet-sniffed uBlock Origin.
At some point you’re gonna trust somebody. You trust your distro to provide the OS, you trust Mozilla to build your browser, etc.
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@PhaseLockedLoop the feature is under General -> Network settings.
be aware it bypasses your local host file.
Cool! Did not know that. I really wish all Operating systems just came with support for it next iteration.
Oh I do. I trust myself and my own vetting of software. If I cant access the source I almost always virtualize it or at least protect myself from most of it. What I am basically saying with this post is that people really ought to take control of their digital lives instead of being controlled which is definitely occuring with people younger than all of us
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That’s your choice, if you want to run hosts files absolutely go for it. Just don’t foment FUD.
I dont think I did. I merely suggested that Adblock and Ublock have the potential to collect analytics in which they do indeed do for their “smart blocking” features that allow some nice ads through. You absolutely cannot determine that without research and analytics
I may have gotten confused here but that’s a built in firefox feature… or do you mean just to have the option to use secure DNS on the OS level ?