6 ms·

I tried pi-hole but my family couldn't make it work. Pihole blocks a lot of content they want to see, for example, email newsletters from our city gov. I unders

by badbug 8y ago

I tried pi-hole but my family couldn't make it work. Pihole blocks a lot of content they want to see, for example, email newsletters from our city gov. I understand why (privacy/tracking concerns) but it was just blocking too much and frustrating non-technical users in my house.

chooseaname 8y ago
I'm very curious why it would block city gov. I've been running it for over a year on my server and I have not heard a peep out of any family members complaining about not reaching anything.
- y4mi 8y ago
  A lot of newsletters use click tracking. These scripts are blocked with a full block list, making everything unusable. It's often affiliate stuff and the newsletters that do this stuff
Mister_Snuggles 8y ago
I found the same thing with emails sent from an airline. It was frustrating because I did actually want to follow the links in the emails as they were to do with a flight I was taking.
- mirceal 8y ago
  You can whitelist domains, you can add to the blacklist or you can temporarily disable pihole (5-10min whatever) while you do something.
  - badbug 8y ago
    Yes you can. But having non-technical people verbalize the need to whitelist a domain is incredibly painful.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - Mister_Snuggles 8y ago
    Yup, I temporarily disabled it and life was good. But I can understand how this would frustrate people, especially when they don't know how to disable it or aren't given the password.
    - abraham_lincoln 8y ago
      What about WS2811s with a pushbutton to temporarily disable, or a pushbutton on one of the GPIO pins, with the switch in a central location?
      - ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
        The included dashboard with the pi-hole is incredibly easy to use, so I just have it bookmarked on all our browsers in case someone in my family needs to pause it or whitelist/blacklist a site. We barely ever have to touch it though, mostly just to update the blocklists occasionally.
        abraham_lincoln 8y ago
        I was thinking use-cases for house guests or very non-technical folks (what is a bookmark?).
        lostlogin 8y ago
        Guest wifi network which doesn’t go through the pi?
        ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
        Arcade button[0] mounted on the RPi that initiates the 5 minute pause script? [0]https://www.adafruit.com/product/1185 https://www.adafruit.com/product/1185
        abraham_lincoln 8y ago
        Yes!!!
ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
That's interesting. There's another comment further down saying it broke stuff too, but I've honestly never had that happen. The most I've ever seen it "break" anything was formatting issues when people didn't declare the ad div size. To be fair, we're very light/casual web users as most of my hobbies/entertainment are physical electronics and my wife/kids mostly watch Netflix/Stan or just browse reddit/news sites. I'm sure there's plenty of stuff it breaks (due to how it works and how complex modern sites/web-apps can be), I've just been lucky that all of the sites we use seem to work fine.
- badbug 8y ago
  They may be suffering in silence. Ask them if any sites or emails seem broken.
- amag 8y ago
  > The most I've ever seen it "break" anything was formatting issues when people didn't declare the ad div size. Haha, I remember some years back a popular C++ programming site would break if you didn't have an adblocker because someone had put wide header banner ads in both of the side banner areas, shrinking the text to a single word column in the middle. I guess they only tested their website with adblockers on...
move-on-by 8y ago
A lot of these list maintainers put a lot of work into not breaking things, but their are just too many websites out their to know if a block breaks one of them or not. Send the list maintainer an email - or if they are on Github/Gitlab open a ticket and have a discussion. I think you'll find many of them are happy to remove breaking domains. Of course whitelist is always an option too if the list maintainer disagrees with the removal of a domain. Also, there is a popular whitelist project for the Pi-Hole that can make it more user friendly: https://github.com/anudeepND/whitelist https://github.com/anudeepND/whitelist
- badbug 8y ago
  I spoke directly with the pihole maintainers. They took a Hardline position that them blocking email from my city was the right thing to do because it used click tracking or some other metric gathering and was deemed a privacy risk. I understand the devotion to a cause but it was too myopic for me.
  - lightswitch05 8y ago
    As far as I know, the pi-hole maintainers do not maintain any of the default block lists. I maintain a list [1] that is then feed into the popular host list by Steven Black [2] - which is a default list. I definitely do not want to break things for people and I'm happy to remove any reasonable domains from the list. I wouldn't consider google analytics a reasonable one to remove - but you get the idea. I hate to hear you had a bad experience of it. If my list had the breaking domains for you, I would of loved to have a ticket opened where we could discuss it. Sometimes it isn't clear cut between ads & tracking and useful services. [1] https://github.com/lightswitch05/hosts https://github.com/lightswitch05/hosts [2] https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
  - jancsika 8y ago
    Don't they have some kind of whitelist you can use?
    - freehunter 8y ago

by badbug 8y ago

chooseaname 8y ago

I'm very curious why it would block city gov. I've been running it for over a year on my server and I have not heard a peep out of any family members complaining about not reaching anything.

y4mi 8y ago
A lot of newsletters use click tracking. These scripts are blocked with a full block list, making everything unusable. It's often affiliate stuff and the newsletters that do this stuff

Mister_Snuggles 8y ago

I found the same thing with emails sent from an airline. It was frustrating because I did actually want to follow the links in the emails as they were to do with a flight I was taking.

mirceal 8y ago
You can whitelist domains, you can add to the blacklist or you can temporarily disable pihole (5-10min whatever) while you do something.
- badbug 8y ago
  Yes you can. But having non-technical people verbalize the need to whitelist a domain is incredibly painful.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Mister_Snuggles 8y ago
  Yup, I temporarily disabled it and life was good. But I can understand how this would frustrate people, especially when they don't know how to disable it or aren't given the password.
  - abraham_lincoln 8y ago
    What about WS2811s with a pushbutton to temporarily disable, or a pushbutton on one of the GPIO pins, with the switch in a central location?
    - ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
      The included dashboard with the pi-hole is incredibly easy to use, so I just have it bookmarked on all our browsers in case someone in my family needs to pause it or whitelist/blacklist a site. We barely ever have to touch it though, mostly just to update the blocklists occasionally.
      - abraham_lincoln 8y ago
        I was thinking use-cases for house guests or very non-technical folks (what is a bookmark?).
        lostlogin 8y ago
        Guest wifi network which doesn’t go through the pi?
        ObsoleteNerd 8y ago
        Arcade button[0] mounted on the RPi that initiates the 5 minute pause script? [0]https://www.adafruit.com/product/1185 https://www.adafruit.com/product/1185
        abraham_lincoln 8y ago
        Yes!!!

ObsoleteNerd 8y ago

That's interesting. There's another comment further down saying it broke stuff too, but I've honestly never had that happen. The most I've ever seen it "break" anything was formatting issues when people didn't declare the ad div size. To be fair, we're very light/casual web users as most of my hobbies/entertainment are physical electronics and my wife/kids mostly watch Netflix/Stan or just browse reddit/news sites. I'm sure there's plenty of stuff it breaks (due to how it works and how complex modern sites/web-apps can be), I've just been lucky that all of the sites we use seem to work fine.

badbug 8y ago
They may be suffering in silence. Ask them if any sites or emails seem broken.
amag 8y ago
> The most I've ever seen it "break" anything was formatting issues when people didn't declare the ad div size. Haha, I remember some years back a popular C++ programming site would break if you didn't have an adblocker because someone had put wide header banner ads in both of the side banner areas, shrinking the text to a single word column in the middle. I guess they only tested their website with adblockers on...

move-on-by 8y ago

A lot of these list maintainers put a lot of work into not breaking things, but their are just too many websites out their to know if a block breaks one of them or not. Send the list maintainer an email - or if they are on Github/Gitlab open a ticket and have a discussion. I think you'll find many of them are happy to remove breaking domains. Of course whitelist is always an option too if the list maintainer disagrees with the removal of a domain. Also, there is a popular whitelist project for the Pi-Hole that can make it more user friendly: https://github.com/anudeepND/whitelist https://github.com/anudeepND/whitelist

badbug 8y ago
I spoke directly with the pihole maintainers. They took a Hardline position that them blocking email from my city was the right thing to do because it used click tracking or some other metric gathering and was deemed a privacy risk. I understand the devotion to a cause but it was too myopic for me.
- lightswitch05 8y ago
  As far as I know, the pi-hole maintainers do not maintain any of the default block lists. I maintain a list [1] that is then feed into the popular host list by Steven Black [2] - which is a default list. I definitely do not want to break things for people and I'm happy to remove any reasonable domains from the list. I wouldn't consider google analytics a reasonable one to remove - but you get the idea. I hate to hear you had a bad experience of it. If my list had the breaking domains for you, I would of loved to have a ticket opened where we could discuss it. Sometimes it isn't clear cut between ads & tracking and useful services. [1] https://github.com/lightswitch05/hosts https://github.com/lightswitch05/hosts [2] https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
- jancsika 8y ago
  Don't they have some kind of whitelist you can use?
  - freehunter 8y ago