6 ms·

One can achieve this locally, on a laptop/desktop, using https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts Or you can combine that with

by buro9 10y ago

One can achieve this locally, on a laptop/desktop, using https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts Or you can combine that with https://github.com/jlund/streisand https://github.com/jlund/streisand to have a VPN service that happens to adblock (great for mobile). That said... I like that Optimal have made this too, because neither of the above can work for all devices in a household and more things in the house are tracking you and serving adverts (TV!). The real questions I have are: Who sources the list of domain names in there that they will null route? How will this work with DNSSEC protected sources or whether they anticipate this at all? How will they become aware of new domains being used by smart devices that are not shared by web sites (and therefore no-one notices and adds it to any blacklist)?

koolba 10y ago
I think it'll be hilarious if the future of DNS security and authentication is driven by ad companies ensuring consumers can't dodge them.
benologist 10y ago
If you want StevenBlack's hosts list to be network-wide I integrated it with an open source, self-hosted DNS server called https://pi-hole.net/ https://pi-hole.net/ last week which adds a slick admin interface and browser extensions too, then I put it all in a Vagrantfile and set my router to use the VM as a DNS server. Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/ELL9CDu.png https://i.imgur.com/ELL9CDu.png Vagrantfile: https://github.com/benlowry/pihole-extended-hosts https://github.com/benlowry/pihole-extended-hosts
- xienze 10y ago
  Alternately, if your router is capable of doing so, have it be the DNS server, seeded with the hosts file. That's what I do with my EdgeRouter Lite.
- dalanmiller 10y ago
  I use pi-hole at home and it's a great little tool for my home network and I think makes a noticeable difference on web browsing speeds. My only wish is that it would serve a page notifying me "this is possibly an ad, but would you like to continue?" versus just flat out blocking. I know there's a whitelisting functionality but it'd be cool if I could handle this directly in my actions in the browser.
- nwrk 10y ago
  Nice! Thanks
- shirman 10y ago
  Is it possible to marry this to Bind9?
JustSomeNobody 10y ago
I use this with Gas Mask on OS X.
optimalrob 10y ago
Hi I'm the CEO of Optimal, Rob. We use open source lists of adservers but have had to evolve from those lists since some of them are invalid or overly aggressive. We do not and will never make decisions about what to block based on being paid by any of these companies. We are building a consumer filtering system, and we are responsible to consumers. If you try it out and find any sites that don't work as intended please email us or contact support.
- DyslexicAtheist 10y ago
  Hi, Will you switch over to a paid service once you're out of beta? Also what's your policy on logging? Below (a probably outdated list of) privacy enhanced servers that don't log. # Swiss Privacy Foundation http://www.privacyfoundation.ch/de/service/server.html 77.109.138.45 77.109.139.29 # www.censurfridns.dk http://www.censurfridns.dk/ 91.239.100.100 89.233.43.71 # CCC http://www.ccc.de/censorship/dns-howto 85.214.20.141 204.152.184.76 194.150.168.168 213.73.91.35 # Comodo Secure DNS https://www.comodo.com/secure-dns/ 8.26.56.26 8.20.247.20 # DNS Watch https://dns.watch/index 84.200.69.80 84.200.70.40 # Fool DNS http://www.fooldns.com/fooldns-community/ 87.118.111.215 # Free DNS http://freedns.zone/ 37.235.1.174 37.235.1.177 take the above list to find the one fastest for you: for i in `cat dns.txt|grep -v '^#'` do qt=`dig @$i techcrunch.com| grep "Query time:" |cut -f2 -d ':'` echo "$i: $qt" done
  - optimalrob 10y ago
    We will not - we intend to keep this service free. We hope that some portion of people sign up for our publisher tips, to reward journalists for great content. We take a percentage of they but just as I have publicly said most publishers should NOT block ad blocking users but it's up to them, we hope to provide an optional mechanism for people to pay. Longer term we think a lot of advertising is transformed by software. I wrote about this here - https://medium.com/@robleathern/artificial-intelligence-will-make-advertising-obsolete-72092f0d5093?source=linkShare-5347d57c202a-1469903209 https://medium.com/@robleathern/artificial-intelligence-will...
    - 10y ago
drdaeman 10y ago
> neither of the above can work for all devices in a household and more things in the house are tracking you and serving adverts Isn't the best approach is to just buy only devices that either known to not have adware onboard (e.g. "dumb" TVs), or that can be re-flashed with software you can relatively trust? That only applies to the core OS and its capabilities. The apps can contain all the nonsense they want, because OS can deny the access or feeds the sanitized data if the app's badly written or insists on the business model where user pays with their privacy.
stordoff 10y ago
> One can achieve this locally, on a laptop/desktop, using https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts I use this with DD-WRT to get network-wide filtering. It's not perfect (only updates on router boot), but good enough for me. Additional DNSMasq options: addn-hosts=/tmp/ad-hosts no-resolv strict-order server=8.8.8.8 server=8.8.4.4 Startup script: wget -qO /tmp/ad-hosts-v4 https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts H_MERGE=/tmp/ad-hosts H_ORIG=/tmp/ad-hosts-v4 sort $H_ORIG | uniq | grep "^0" >> $H_MERGE sort $H_ORIG | uniq | grep "^0" | sed "s/0\.0\.0\.0/::/g" >> $H_MERGE stopservice dnsmasq && startservice dnsmasq
- jsingleton 10y ago
  Network-wide is the way to go. Hosts files can be tricky to set up on phones and tablets. I run dnsmasq on a pi as my ISP router is pretty limited. You can't even change the DNS servers, so the pi has to do DHCP too. I use it to block other things like fixed banner overlays. With caching you can get it to work when you go off WiFi too [0]. Not sure I'd use Google's DNS servers though. Your ISP's are probably better for both speed and privacy. You can test the speed with an old Google project called namebench [1]. [0] https://unop.uk/block-bbc-breaking-news-on-all-devices https://unop.uk/block-bbc-breaking-news-on-all-devices [1] https://code.google.com/archive/p/namebench https://code.google.com/archive/p/namebench
  - stordoff 10y ago
    > Not sure I'd use Google's DNS servers though. Your ISP's are probably better for both speed and privacy. You can test the speed with an old Google project called namebench [1]. Unfortunately my ISP's (Sky, UK) DNS servers aren't particularly reliable. My devices are behind the DD-WRT router that forces its own DNS settings (other servers are intercepted), but the rest of the family connects directly to the ISP router[1]. Multiple times I've been browsing the Internet without issue, but other people have been unable to use the Internet. Changing their device to use Google's DNS server resolved the issue. [1] Been meaning to merge the two for a while, but haven't got around to it yet
- 10y ago
Borating 10y ago
See also FreeContributor [1] (works not just with dnsmasq, but unbound and pdnsd and hosts file) [1] https://github.com/tbds/FreeContributor https://github.com/tbds/FreeContributor
hoopsho 10y ago
Metiix Blockade blocks at the DNS level.... Locally on Windows or Linux or a raspberry pi if you want.

by buro9 10y ago

koolba 10y ago

I think it'll be hilarious if the future of DNS security and authentication is driven by ad companies ensuring consumers can't dodge them.

benologist 10y ago

If you want StevenBlack's hosts list to be network-wide I integrated it with an open source, self-hosted DNS server called https://pi-hole.net/ https://pi-hole.net/ last week which adds a slick admin interface and browser extensions too, then I put it all in a Vagrantfile and set my router to use the VM as a DNS server. Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/ELL9CDu.png https://i.imgur.com/ELL9CDu.png Vagrantfile: https://github.com/benlowry/pihole-extended-hosts https://github.com/benlowry/pihole-extended-hosts

xienze 10y ago
Alternately, if your router is capable of doing so, have it be the DNS server, seeded with the hosts file. That's what I do with my EdgeRouter Lite.
dalanmiller 10y ago
I use pi-hole at home and it's a great little tool for my home network and I think makes a noticeable difference on web browsing speeds. My only wish is that it would serve a page notifying me "this is possibly an ad, but would you like to continue?" versus just flat out blocking. I know there's a whitelisting functionality but it'd be cool if I could handle this directly in my actions in the browser.
nwrk 10y ago
Nice! Thanks
shirman 10y ago
Is it possible to marry this to Bind9?

JustSomeNobody 10y ago

I use this with Gas Mask on OS X.

optimalrob 10y ago

Hi I'm the CEO of Optimal, Rob. We use open source lists of adservers but have had to evolve from those lists since some of them are invalid or overly aggressive. We do not and will never make decisions about what to block based on being paid by any of these companies. We are building a consumer filtering system, and we are responsible to consumers. If you try it out and find any sites that don't work as intended please email us or contact support.

DyslexicAtheist 10y ago
Hi, Will you switch over to a paid service once you're out of beta? Also what's your policy on logging? Below (a probably outdated list of) privacy enhanced servers that don't log. # Swiss Privacy Foundation http://www.privacyfoundation.ch/de/service/server.html 77.109.138.45 77.109.139.29 # www.censurfridns.dk http://www.censurfridns.dk/ 91.239.100.100 89.233.43.71 # CCC http://www.ccc.de/censorship/dns-howto 85.214.20.141 204.152.184.76 194.150.168.168 213.73.91.35 # Comodo Secure DNS https://www.comodo.com/secure-dns/ 8.26.56.26 8.20.247.20 # DNS Watch https://dns.watch/index 84.200.69.80 84.200.70.40 # Fool DNS http://www.fooldns.com/fooldns-community/ 87.118.111.215 # Free DNS http://freedns.zone/ 37.235.1.174 37.235.1.177 take the above list to find the one fastest for you: for i in `cat dns.txt|grep -v '^#'` do qt=`dig @$i techcrunch.com| grep "Query time:" |cut -f2 -d ':'` echo "$i: $qt" done
- optimalrob 10y ago
  We will not - we intend to keep this service free. We hope that some portion of people sign up for our publisher tips, to reward journalists for great content. We take a percentage of they but just as I have publicly said most publishers should NOT block ad blocking users but it's up to them, we hope to provide an optional mechanism for people to pay. Longer term we think a lot of advertising is transformed by software. I wrote about this here - https://medium.com/@robleathern/artificial-intelligence-will-make-advertising-obsolete-72092f0d5093?source=linkShare-5347d57c202a-1469903209 https://medium.com/@robleathern/artificial-intelligence-will...
  - 10y ago

drdaeman 10y ago

> neither of the above can work for all devices in a household and more things in the house are tracking you and serving adverts Isn't the best approach is to just buy only devices that either known to not have adware onboard (e.g. "dumb" TVs), or that can be re-flashed with software you can relatively trust? That only applies to the core OS and its capabilities. The apps can contain all the nonsense they want, because OS can deny the access or feeds the sanitized data if the app's badly written or insists on the business model where user pays with their privacy.

stordoff 10y ago

> One can achieve this locally, on a laptop/desktop, using https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts I use this with DD-WRT to get network-wide filtering. It's not perfect (only updates on router boot), but good enough for me. Additional DNSMasq options: addn-hosts=/tmp/ad-hosts no-resolv strict-order server=8.8.8.8 server=8.8.4.4 Startup script: wget -qO /tmp/ad-hosts-v4 https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts H_MERGE=/tmp/ad-hosts H_ORIG=/tmp/ad-hosts-v4 sort $H_ORIG | uniq | grep "^0" >> $H_MERGE sort $H_ORIG | uniq | grep "^0" | sed "s/0\.0\.0\.0/::/g" >> $H_MERGE stopservice dnsmasq && startservice dnsmasq

jsingleton 10y ago
Network-wide is the way to go. Hosts files can be tricky to set up on phones and tablets. I run dnsmasq on a pi as my ISP router is pretty limited. You can't even change the DNS servers, so the pi has to do DHCP too. I use it to block other things like fixed banner overlays. With caching you can get it to work when you go off WiFi too [0]. Not sure I'd use Google's DNS servers though. Your ISP's are probably better for both speed and privacy. You can test the speed with an old Google project called namebench [1]. [0] https://unop.uk/block-bbc-breaking-news-on-all-devices https://unop.uk/block-bbc-breaking-news-on-all-devices [1] https://code.google.com/archive/p/namebench https://code.google.com/archive/p/namebench
- stordoff 10y ago
  > Not sure I'd use Google's DNS servers though. Your ISP's are probably better for both speed and privacy. You can test the speed with an old Google project called namebench [1]. Unfortunately my ISP's (Sky, UK) DNS servers aren't particularly reliable. My devices are behind the DD-WRT router that forces its own DNS settings (other servers are intercepted), but the rest of the family connects directly to the ISP router[1]. Multiple times I've been browsing the Internet without issue, but other people have been unable to use the Internet. Changing their device to use Google's DNS server resolved the issue. [1] Been meaning to merge the two for a while, but haven't got around to it yet
10y ago

Borating 10y ago

See also FreeContributor [1] (works not just with dnsmasq, but unbound and pdnsd and hosts file) [1] https://github.com/tbds/FreeContributor https://github.com/tbds/FreeContributor

hoopsho 10y ago

Metiix Blockade blocks at the DNS level.... Locally on Windows or Linux or a raspberry pi if you want.