Edit:
Panel 3: PiHole + uBlock Origin
Panel 4: PiHole + uBlock Origin and recurring donations to pay creators
Follow-up question: what open source software projects do you contribute to? I like using Liberapay or Open Collective, with Patreon as a third choice.
pihole is not a replacement for ublock
Thanks for catching that. I have updated the description.
Use both together!
Is pi hole any better than using adguard DNS?
pihole uses the same method of blocking as adguard dns but is more configurable, and since it's usually self-hosted you have full control over it.
btw, nextdns is pretty good too (think of it as a managed configurable, slightly more private alternative to adguard dns, great if you're not into self hosting).
it lacks custom domain blocklists tho. you can add your own white/blacklisted domains but not whole lists, except ones provided by nextdns.
also, it's a paid service. free tier includes 300k requests per month, which is enough for ~1.5 devices from my experience.
It's the same technology, like how chrome and Firefox are.
This might be a good place to ask this. I was messing around with my Asus router setting last night and noticed that it had Ad Guard, which works similarly to PiHole with DNS. To test it I went to Reddit and saw ads still. Is Ad Guard not as effective as PiHole or Reddit ads are DOM based?
You need to flush your local DNS cache after turning that on for it to be 100% effective.
As a rule of thumb, I expect that Asus as a business only cares about adbock from two angles:
To the first, there's little incentive to ever update the lists after you've bought the device, so it's quickly outdated. To the second, it's like to be far more optimized for Amazon or Newegg, then for Reddit. Between the two, I don't generally expect them to hold a candle to pi-hole and similar software.
Forgot unbound
Most install guides include pihole with Unbound DNS but running your own DNS server is not a requirement for ad and tracker blocking.
Does anyone know if firewalls like OPNSense can do IPS for ads and tracking instead of "normal" intrusions like malware?
I've ran Pihole for years but switched to NextDNS. It gives me more control over my kids access.
For example scheduled access to YouTube and Roblox. Also, since it's a public service it means I can block them regardless of network. So for example when we are on holiday. My eldest worked out he could use network data on his phone to avoid the Pihole.
Oh, and it's DNS over TLS so queries are now encrypted rather than plain text that regular DNS.
None of this will block YouTube ads though. For that I use NewPipe or Firefox and uBlock Origin.
Can't they change their DNS settings?
Sure. But they aren't at that age to be aware. To be honest unless someone is clued up the average person wouldn't know either.
How old are they?
13, 12, 9
I'm 13 lol
As someone who had tons of parental controls on my stuff as a child, they might figure it out far quicker than you'd think
They find ways yes. When I was blocking YouTube I found him watching YouTube via Spotify. Not sure how that worked. But I blocked that too as a result.
I don't think they have anything currently as when it's blocked you see them outside their bedrooms a lot more!
My mom disabled the browser on my phone, so I hit the button in an app to view the terms of service when then opened up an in-app browser. When she figured out how to stop that, I manually typed out the url for a google search and downloaded the webpage using shortcuts on an iphone, then hopped around the internet by downloading and viewing the webpages of any links I could find. Surprisingly, it worked on things like YouTube as well
On the bright side, stuff like that is why I'm far more computer literate than many other people around my age that aren't in college for something IT related
That's the point yes. At some point I'm sure they will work it out. But they haven't yet. Luckily the eldest is lazy. If he wasn't he would have read the email he got when he was 13 which meant he could leave the family group which I also use to turn off their devices for bed time...
adguard DNS on a VPN router is pretty good too.
As is host blocking via OpenWrt
adguard DNS and proton VPN on your VPN router.
Pihole is a great project, but it is objectively less capable than uBlock Origin.
That is not a criticism of the software. It is just a fundamental fact that DNS based adblockers are less powerful, and less granular/precise than Browser based adblockers.
They do work well in combination though (the DNS level adblockers gives you moderately effective network wide blocking, and uBlock Origin gives you exceptional blocking but is limited to the browser.
I'm not technical enough, but why can't pihole do as much as ublock? It's at the router level before anything gets to the browser, it has all the same info the browser will eventually get.
Shouldn't it be theoretically possible to do the same?
pihole does not deceypt https traffic, so it cant change dom. even if it could, it can't modify stuff added by js.
also it can only block whole domains, not individual urls
uBlock has direct access to the DOM and so can modify what the browser renders. For example, YouTube ads are hosted on the same domains as their videos and so PiHole cannot block them, but uBlock can.
I don't understand why tho, what is it that let's unblock distinguish ad video vs real video?
Unlock can read the code being sent to your browser and act accordingly. It's much more granular.
Pihole can only see you're going to YouTube.com. It cannot see what YouTube is sending you.
It's at the router level
It’s a DNS server and does not have the same capabilities as the router
It has all the same info the browser will eventually get.
It does not. Not just because of the previous reason but also because most traffic is encrypted nowadays (https) which means that even the router can’t read/modify the traffic to the device.
Another issue is that some things blocked by uBlock are hard to detect with static analysis in comparison to reading the rendered HTML.
At least from using both, I feel like pihole kinda sucks. It's rather limited and breaks a lot of stuff.
UBlock is awesome. Pihole only really breaks if you add too many or too aggressive blocklists. The main benefit of pihole is you can block ads and trackers from any device on your network. I find the biggest offenders to be smart devices.
I’m using both uBlock and Pi-Hole and I have to say that Pi-Hole is great. The monitoring features are pretty good and the ad blocking that it offers is, although way less than uBlock, still way better than none at all. It blocks most ads from the random apps I have installed on my phone and a surprising amount of trackers that are sent through my network. It also acts as a pretty good fallback if whatever I’m using physically cannot use a browser like an app or an embedded system.
For me personally I also like to use Pi-Hole for network wide site filtering. If I find a website that’s really sketchy or obviously a scam or trying to make you download malware, I just add it to my blacklist.
Of course each serves its own purposes and it won’t always be useful for everyone. I personally find the tools that it offers has a lot of benefit for what I do.
TLDR; The ad blocking, although way less than uBlock, is more than enough to act as a basic ad blocker. Not to mention the monitoring tools are an added bonus. It also acts as a great fallback if something I’m using physically can’t make use of uBlock.