Posted by mumber_typhoon 10/29/2025
Personally I’ve settled on blocking at the DNS level with unbound and a blocklist. It’s not perfect but it limits the blast radius.
Content blockers on iOS don't have "full access". Most adblocking apps provide both a content blocker and an extension, the latter of which is used to work around stuff that content blockers can't block, or bugs that result as of blocking scripts from loading, but they're not needed. You can get 95% of the functionality by just using content blockers.
I took a second look at ad blockers on the app store, and many report that they collect various bits of data. Are you saying that there's a special content blocker component to all of these that can't collect data because they're isolated by iOS? I'm not sure how anyone who isn't a iOS developer is supposed to navigate this. To uBlock's credit, their App Store page reports that they collect no data, but is this enforced by iOS? Or just a checkbox that the developer clicked?
Because the "app privacy" disclosures that apple only contains broad categories about what data the app can possibly collect. If the app collects analytics in the UI itself (ie. the part where you select filters or whatever), it has to say the app collects analytics. It's not possible to say "we only collect analytics on your usage of the app, not what your browsing history is".
>Are you saying that there's a special content blocker component to all of these that can't collect data because they're isolated by iOS?
Yes.
Honestly this is more of an App Store issue than an Adblock one. For all of Apple's purported talents in curation, they really cannot seem to filter out the odd trojan horses: https://blog.lastpass.com/posts/warning-fraudulent-app-imper...
The app was removed a day after your article was posted. The app name, developer, icon, and images are all different. It's absolutely a problem, but it was addressed.
If Apple aggressively took action against this with a high error rate, the headlines would probably be about anti-competition, censorship, and upset developers.
Two-way signature validation. Apple distributes unique developer IDs; make the dev sign the app locally before uploading it, like Google does for the Play Store. If those trojan horses still make it through Apple's manual inspection process, then they need to fire everyone working for the App Store and replace them with AI.
> If Apple aggressively took action against this with a high error rate
They need to take action. Apple's entire argument for an App Store monopoly is that they curate apps individually before they're uploaded to ensure a baseline of quality. When they stop vetting apps and allow the App Store to become like every other store, their argument in favor of monopoly control evaporates.
So yes, it would be anti-competitive censorship, but that's nothing Apple hasn't done before. The real issue is that their "premium" store interface is getting shown-up by the Google Play services. At the going rate there won't be anti-competitive behavior to complain about since Apple will be forced to accept competing storefronts - and they have no one to blame but themselves.
It's funny my Motorolla phone keeps installing random games on it like ugh...
It is a cheap phone I think I got it new at $160 and that's the thing it has 8GB of RAM, the pictures are subpar (blurring) but other than that it works for me, multi-app non-game
This is on Verizon but yeah it'll just install new games and say "Enjoy these new apps" I'm like wtf I think most recently one of the games it installed is Mahjong
edit: apparently it's MotoApps doing it
https://community.verizon.com/t5/Mobile-Network-Archive/Game...
Oh my bad that's literally the link you posted yeah
I got MotoApps from this post https://www.reddit.com/r/motorola/comments/1dl001c/motorola_...
- Does this also block ads on Youtube (in the browser)?
- Can this block Youtube Shorts (they're way too addictive for me)?
[0] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/vinegar-tube-cleaner/id1591303...
I'd almost use the "real" YouTube app with ads on, if I could disable Shorts entirely.
Good read: adblock test sites can be wildly inaccurate (alerting to connections that never made it, given redirect to the local shim resource) and can easily be gamed.