Adblocking

Why?

• Reduce visual clutter by eliminating unnecessary distractions, creating a cleaner, more focused online environment

• Enhances Security: Prevents malicious ads and reduces exposure to malware, phishing, and other threats.

• Limits Data Sharing: Prevents companies from building detailed user profiles that are often sold to third parties, including government agencies.

• Fills Regulatory Gaps: Offers a proactive solution in the absence of sensible digital privacy laws.

• Because it's up to us to seize the means of computation!

Methods of adblocking

Here are some ways traffic can be filtered.

In your web browser

• Brave Browser - Chromium-based web browser with built in ad/tracker blocking, security controls, etc.
• Browser extensions:
  • uBlock Origin: an ad and tracker blocker
  • AdGuard
  • AdBlock Plus
  • Ghostery
• Manifest V3 compliant tracker blocking extensions:
  • Disconnect

At the network level (local DNS blocking)

This can efficiently filter all of the devices in your home network (phone, laptop, PC, etc.). Some people run adblockers on a Raspberry Pi or as a docker container on a server. These operate by becoming the DNS server to all of the devices on your network.

• Pi-hole often installed on a Raspberry Pi and connected to one's network.
• AdGuard Home is also a very good DNS blocker, similar to Pi-hole
• pfBlockerNG a plugin for pfSense firewall software

At the DNS level (upstream DNS servers)

In most home settings, one's WiFi router defines your DNS server. This server provides IP addresses (e.g. what is the IP for google.com?). Set your upstream DNS server to one that filters out ad providers, trackers, known scammers/hackers, etc.). Once you, it then provides this filtering for all devices in your network.

• NextDNS Allows one to configure custom DNS filtering. Has lots of options for security, ad & tracker blocking, parental controls. Free for up to 300,000 requests/month. If you go over that, it acts as a normal DNS.
  • If you set up and configure an account, then set it as your upstream DNS server (usually in your home Wi-Fi router's settings), this will filter all traffic for everything on your network like a Pi-hole does. The only difference is instead of being in your house it acts as an "upstream" (non-local) DNS.
  • NextDNS Setup Guide
• AdGuard DNS - does what AdGuard Home does (adblocking, privacy, parental controls) but as an upstream DNS server like NextDNS
• See Secure DNS Resolvers for other DNS resolvers that do not provide the same level of customization but might be better than your ISP's default

Whitelist

The whitelist is a list of things not to block so that the adblocker doesn't break things. You can find existing lists to try to prevent false positives (blocking things that you don't want to be) and add to it over time.

Pre-made whitelists:
 - Anudeep ND Whitelist (domains) (homepage)
 - Commonly whitelisted domains - Pi-hole Forum

Adblocking on Smartphones

Smartphones are tricky because you want to fliter traffic coming from apps as well as the browser. The best way to do this is having something upstream of the phone — like a VPN or DNS server — that captures and filters the traffic.

• iOS adblocking methods
• Android adblocking methods

Tracking

Some also prefer to filter out software trackers and telemetry, used to collect various data about one's use of devices. Much of this may be recording innocuous information about how software is used.

Some examples of not-so-innocuous tracking would be a mobile app sharing one's location data or a VR headset sharing what one's house looks like.

• See Windows Privacy for some tools that disable a great deal of the tracking built into Windows.

Blocklists

Blocklists are lists that the adblocking software uses to match what content to block.
See Types of blocklists