Dec 14 2019, Saturday

Ad Blocking

I have been using uBlock Origin for a while, and can't imagine browsing the web without it.

Everytime I am on a machine that does not have it or I see someone else browsing the internet without it, I cringe a little. I am constantly overwhelmed by the number of ads and and their poor quality. The situation is especially bad on mobile browsers.

I know the irony in saying this, given I work for a company that has one of the largest ad networks.
The ethics of ad blocking are debatable, but user security is not. I have seen too many ads out there that hoodwink users, and waste copious amounts of bandwidth.

Given that most mobile browsers don't support an ad blocker, I setup Pi-Hole which is a DNS based sink hole for ads. Also unfortunately named, I might add.

Pi-Hole

I used an old Asus Tinkerboard S that I was no longer using.
I flashed the latest version of Debian and just ran the Pi-Hole installer. Things just worked.

I enabled the DNS server to bind to all Network interfaces on the Tinkerboard S (via Settings -> Network -> DNS on the admin panel). After this, I ensured that the Tinkerboard S would get a reserved IP from the DHCP pool. I did this using the Google WiFi app.

Once i got those steps out of the way, I turned off all the other DNS servers and made my Tinkerboard S the only DNS server, using the Google WiFi app.

Now that I had a network wide ad blocker, I disabled all conventional ad blocking software.

Conclusion

Pi Hole is an incredible project, which gives us back some much needed control. If you have an old single board computer lying around, give it a go and don't forget to donate to Pi-Hole.