System-level ad-blocking in Android

Posted by birdculture 1 hour ago

System-level ad-blocking in Android(kevinboone.me)

25 points | 15 comments

somebudyelse 40 minutes ago|

Highly recommend https://nextdns.io, great for all kinds of blocking stuff. Plus Firefox or Edge for uBlock support.

subscribed 9 minutes ago|

Well, yeah, it's pretty good, but has a very low free tier limit. It's barely enough to cover my IOT subnet and subnet for stuff like AVR or TVs.

So if I'm supposed to pay for ad blocking, I might as well read the article and use one of the other methods[1] instead :)

[1] I was trying Rethink several times, but WG Tunnel with ad-- and tracker-blocking service works best for me.

BLKNSLVR 6 minutes ago||

Whenever I'm out and about I connect to my home system via wireguard VPN, and all DNS traffic through my home system is funneled into PiHole. I also have a healthy collection of DNS block lists setup on the PiHole (which I'm currently setting up a site to explain/share).

I also have a VPS setup in a similar fashion in case my home connection fails for one of many reasons.

I try to only practice safe internet. Raw-dog the internet and you're asking for an infection.

figmert 1 hour ago||

I can't recommend AdGuard enough. It works across devices, and just does all the DNS level blocking everywhere. I've been able to install it on my parents' devices, my siblings' devices, and more places. They have apps for just about any device. On top of that, you can install user scripts and use them on your mobile phones even if your browser doesn't support them (does require a CA cert being trusted).

My biggest issue is I can't use it while I'm connected to Tailscale, but my plan is to install AdGuard Home on my homelab and have that take over instead. It does remove many of the functions, but it's better than the alternative

xnx 15 minutes ago||

I want to use something like this, but I don't think I can when also using VPN by Google on an unrooted phone.

janwillemb 43 minutes ago||

I point "private DNS" to my VPS with pihole and stunnel, works quite well. Adguard as private DNS is also effective.

teo_zero 13 minutes ago||

Why do you need an app at all? Can't you just manually set a private VPN in the settings?

pmontra 36 minutes ago||

I am using Blockada 5 from https://blokada.org

Onavo 1 hour ago||

Sigh, that's a lot of words to describe DNS based adblocking.

In Android you can either set your DNS server in the system settings or via the VPN API.

Sample code here https://github.com/t895/DNSNet/blob/a-couple-updates/service...

They both do the same thing. There are local device-only resolver apps like

https://rethinkdns.com/

https://github.com/m66b/netguard

Another famous one is DNS66 but it's sadly unmaintained. Avoid apps with the word "ad" in their name, they are usually semi commercial and can't be trusted.

Do note all of these methods can be overridden on the app level e.g. a lot of browsers come bundled with first party VPNs or use their own built-in resolvers.

If you want something more reliable, Firefox on Android with the UBlock Origin and Sponsorblock extensions is still the gold standard. Though do note the Android Firefox is extremely slow compared to the Chromium based browsers.

For app level ads, use an app patcher like https://github.com/morpheapp which can remove all in-app advertisements and inject sponsor blocking code.

Larrikin 39 minutes ago|

In what meaningful way is there any difference in speed between Chrome and Firefox on Android?

I also prefer replacing uBlock Origin with Ad Nauseum which is built on top of ubo.

alekescu 1 hour ago|

There is a special irony to an article about ad blocking containing an apparent undisclosed ad for Nord.

minouye 1 minute ago||

It's a plain link--it's not an ad.

altairprime 41 minutes ago|||

> an apparent undisclosed ad for Nord

What evidence supports the link referenced being an advertisement? I'm not seeing any referral, tracking, or any URI parameter data at all that would support the claim, and this seems to be their only instance of referring to it — where, in this 'state of the union' helpdesk-style article, one or more such 'VPN provider' links seems particularly relevant to visitors. (I do not use whatever this company's products are and have no opinion either way on them aside from mistrusting the claim presented here.)

Cider9986 49 minutes ago|||

One time I saw someone trying to hide an Amazon affiliate link in a post by putting the link text as amazon.com/dp/12345 but the link was amazon.com/dp/12345/ref=tracking. There's no affiliate link for Nord here but it's weird to use it as an example over better options: https://www.privacyguides.org/en/vpn/

gruez 7 minutes ago||

>ref=tracking

Amazon's `ref` parameter isn't used for affiliate codes. It's certainly used for something, but given that internal links have it (eg. the logo in the top left has `/ref=nav_logo`), I wouldn't immediately conclude it's an affiliate link just because it has ref. Actual affiliate links are through the `tag` parameter.