One of the problems I recently focused on lately has been the fact that I’m constantly being fed various forms of ads (from the basic inline text ads to the full on cover the website movie type ad) and this is really starting to get on my nerve.
I understand that this is a way to make a buck and I’m not against it but it reached a point where it started to be really annoying and intrusive … you can’t run a simple google search without getting ads about products that match that search on every other site you visit after that, you can’t watch a video on Youtube without being interrupted 10 times before it finishes, you can’t go shopping online without being bombarded with ads about the products you looked at recently … I for one had enough.
Solution for my problem: DNS sinkhole – practical application: Pi-hole. (The definition of a DNS sinkhole can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_sinkhole )
In my particular case this is quite easy to configure using my standard stuff (linux, bind) but you (the Internet user with a job or a hobby that has nothing to do with linux system administration) might find this harder to implement so my solution for you is the Pi-hole ( https://pi-hole.net/ )
All that one needs to do to set this up is to do a bit of online shopping -> get a Raspberry-Pi kit (a newer one ideally such as: https://thepihut.com/collections/raspberry-pi-kits-and-bundles/products/raspberry-pi-starter-kit) and after you’ve assembled and installed the OS on it follow the guide on pi-hole.net to install the software then configure your home router to forward all DNS requests to the pi you just setup (or use the pi itself as the home router which might be a bit more interesting for the likes of me)
As soon as you have this in place you’ll notice your life just got better … sites will load without them pesky ads AND in most cases they’ll load faster (because your browser does not have to load and render the extra content). This will not be 100% able to block ads (because list of zones needs updating from time to time, some ppl need to report and add new zones to the list, etc, etc, also some sites will probably not work anymore because some are so intrusive that they will not allow you view any content on them without you clicking on one of them stupid popups or ads) BUT will block enough of them so that you can enjoy a decent online experience.
Enjoy! ( I know I am 🙂 )