7 ms·

Raspberry Pi as an Ad Blocking Access Point

71 points by jwcooper 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
deckiedan 13y ago
Nicely written, very clear instructions. I'm still not sure what I think of adblocking... in some ways it makes sense that I can display what I want on my computer, but on the other hand, advertising on web pages is a legitimate and reasonably sane business idea. I don't adblock, but I do have flash on 'click to play', which does stop the most egregious and annoying ads. My guess is, in time, that ad-blocking will simply mean more javascript and html videos (possibly using that clever canvas trick that was demo'd the other day) which are impossible to stop.
Spittie 13y ago
It really reminds me of how you block ads on a router that allow SSH access (like any router running Tomato, DD-WRT, OpenWRT...). There are several guides online, like http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/all-u-need-ad-blocking.33191 http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/all-u-need-ad-b... Anyway, I have mixed feelings on blocking ads at the router level (or using the RasbPi to block them). Those methods don't allow control, so if you need to disable adblocking for any reason, it's not something you can do just pressing a button. Also, since it doesn't work on a per-site basis like Adblock Plus, you can't disable it on sites that you want to support and use ads in a non-intrusive way.
- jwcooper 13y ago
  The guide does include ways to whitelist sites [1] you'd like to support (and mentions it's a good idea!) and is on a per-site basis. It pulls in an ad list from a popular site [2]. [1] http://learn.adafruit.com/raspberry-pi-as-an-ad-blocking-access-point/install-software http://learn.adafruit.com/raspberry-pi-as-an-ad-blocking-acc... [2] http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers
  - tuananh 13y ago
    I think he was talking about a way to quickly toggle the ad blocker on/off.
    - jwcooper 13y ago
      Yea, I didn't write that part out, but it would be fairly easy to write a bash script to turn it on and off (and even a simple web site with a on/off button, as you are running apache in one of the solutions). You could just move the dnsmasq.adlist.conf file out of the dnsmasq.d directory, and then restart dnsmasq.d, and vice versa.
      - mnutt 13y ago
        Even better, with a Raspberry Pi, you could build a physical switch to flip to turn ads on/off.
- GrinningFool 13y ago
  > Also, since it doesn't work on a per-site basis like Adblock Plus, you can't disable it on sites that you want to support and use ads in a non-intrusive way. If the ads are hosted via a third party, it is unfortunately guaranteed invasive even if it's not visually intrusive.
joosters 13y ago
Instead of blocking the DNS, you are much better off running an intelligent HTTP proxy that can just filter out the bad stuff. Try installing 'privoxy' - it's available packaged for most Linux distributions. You can then use dnsmasq to push it as the recommended proxy for clients, or set up a few firewall rules to turn it into a transparent proxy.
- tlrobinson 13y ago
  Of course that won't work for HTTPS sites, which are becoming more prevalent (PSA: install EFF's HTTPS Everywhere: https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere)
  - mux 13y ago
    On Debian you just can use these patches/packages[0] to integrate HTTPS Everywhere into Privoxy. [0]https://github.com/jvasile/freedombox-privoxy‎ https://github.com/jvasile/freedombox-privoxy‎
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Some proxies (e.g. squid) include transparent HTTPS proxying; you just need to generate a certificate and add it to your browser.
    - tlrobinson 13y ago
      Does it work with Chrome's certificate pinning?
  - eli 13y ago
    Privoxy does indeed support HTTPS
    - tlrobinson 13y ago
      I assume it requires you install a generated certificate? How does it handle Chrome's certificate pinning?
alexchamberlain 13y ago
Very interesting. Only flicked through, but please don't run Apache on a Pi; waste of CPU and memory, run nginx or pixelserv (as suggested).
- Dwolb 13y ago
  Could you please elaborate on the tradeoffs?
  - alecdbrooks 13y ago
    In short, fewer features (mainly not being able to host arbitrary files) in exchange for less CPU and memory usage.
- zapt02 13y ago
  bigoted opinion. Apache runs fine on the Pi. Memory considerations aren't a concern when you have 512MB of RAM, and CPU difference is neglibible for these small workloads.
  - alexchamberlain 13y ago
    Sorry, I disagree. Nginx is a much better web server than Apache.
D9u 13y ago
For those of us who don't have a Raspberry Pi there's AdSuck, an ad blocking DNS server from Conformal. https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/adsuck https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/adsuck
JacobJans 13y ago
In addition to blocking ads, I suggest anyone implementing this also blocks all websites containing ads. Why? When you "say goodbye to ads" you're also saying goodbye to the source of income that pays the people who made the website. No money, means no employees to create the website, means no more website. Not everything can be open source / free. Nor should it be. People deserve to be able to make a living doing the work they do.
- derefr 13y ago
  > When you "say goodbye to ads" you're also saying goodbye to the source of income that pays the people who made the website. No you're not; you're just preemptively indicating your decision to be part of the "free-rider tier" of their system. Most business models aren't built on making money from every customer equally. See free-to-play games, for example: 90% of people pay nothing, 9% of people pay $10 or so, and 1% of people ("whales") pay ridiculous amounts that sustain the business. They don't want the 90% to start paying--they want the 90% to talk about "this great free game they found" to achieve a network-effect that brings more whales to their funnel. Now, if Firefox and Chrome and IE integrated ad-blockers, they'd be responsible for "saying goodbye to the source of income that pays the people who made the website." But your using an ad-blocker when you weren't in the target demographic for the ads anyway (the target demographic is always at least "is willing to click an ad" and "has money to spend") makes no more difference to the site than your voting in a non-swing state makes to the results of an election. Keep in mind: if a site really wanted to, it could detect that ads are loaded and displaying before it shows you the content. But nobody asks for this feature; goodwill toward free-riders is a necessary part of doing business.
  - JacobJans 13y ago
    > your using an ad-blocker when you weren't in the target demographic for the ads anyway ... makes no more difference to the site than your voting in a non-swing state makes to the results of an election. Good luck creating an ad block software that automatically determines whether or not you are in the 'target demographic' before filtering the ad! (And if you think you're not in the target demographic because you don't spend money, and you don't click on ads, then you have a very limited understanding of the ad business.) > you're just preemptively indicating your decision to be part of the "free-rider tier" of their system. This is just a fancy way of saying "I don't click on ads, therefore it's OK to block them." That's a bad argument that reflects very little on the reality of how advertising works. > Now, if Firefox and Chrome and IE integrated ad-blockers, they'd be responsible for "saying goodbye to the source of income that pays the people who made the website." You have a good argument here. People who create and promote ad blocking software have a destructive effect on websites. They actively work to reduce the revenue generated by websites, which in turn reduces the budgets for those websites, which lowers quality. The bottom line is that websites depend on advertisements in order to exist. If you are blocking ads, then you are voting for those websites to not exist.
shawnreilly 13y ago
Reminds me of the first Project I did with my Pi (last year) except I was using Squid and two Ethernet Ports (Apple's USB to Ethernet Adapter is basically plug and play with Linux). I eventually did a Wifi version, very similar to this article. I then developed a basic Web based UI that allowed you to turn it On and Off by clicking a button. The next step was to use the GPIO Pins to hook up a physical switch that you could press to turn it on/off, but never went that far. For a while there I thought about packaging it as a Product and trying a campaign on Kickstarter, but I didn't like the idea of just repackaging someone else’s Hardware and Code and selling it as my own. Eventually someone else did their own version (AdTrap) and was mildly successful. These days I'm still working on Pi projects as a side hobby, got 2 Projects I'm working on right now. Ironically, one of them supports the Advertising Industry (but not in the way one might think), and the other has to do with Content Delivery. The only real challenge I have (and it's a big one) is taking the next step and building something for mass production. Since the Pi is pre-made, I view it as a great platform to build a prototype, but not necessarily a good platform for mass distribution of a product (from a business perspective, production cost too high). For anyone else into it, check out the new GPS chip's they're selling. Awesome possibilities! Regarding Ad's and Blocking Ad's, I have no remorse building something that gives the consumer a choice to blocks Ad's. While I do agree that Ad's can be a viable and acceptable business model, it is my personal opinion that the Advertising Industry has been abusing consumers for decades. And I find this detrimental to the Industry as a whole. I think it's about time that the consumers had a choice. I find the average (aka normal) user experience of your typical Ad (in any format) to be horrible; The Ad is basically forced on you. I also find that the Advertising Industry has little regard for the consumer's Privacy, which I do not find acceptable (as a consumer). I do think that there are innovative ways to Advertise and create a positive experience, but I don’t think the industry (as a whole) has realized/embraced them yet. It seems to me that the Advertising Industry is stuck on a model developed in the 60's, and has continued to push this old model even while technology evolves. I think it's time for the Advertising Industry to evolve. Hopefully I can test/validate this with one of my next Pi based Projects.
jingo 13y ago
I hope that readers understand you don't need a RPi or dnsmasq to accomplish ad blocking. That said, this in my opinion an excellent use of a small form factor computer: as a gateway. As a side note, what would happen if we put our own private address space "web apps" on our gateway? Voila, the added "web app" functionality that our devices expect, without the need to use third party servers on the public internet that collect personal info. In any event, if you do not have a Pi, you could just as well use any old i386 computer and any old DNS server software. I use a gateway like this not to block ads but to detect and, if necessary, stop mobile apps that phone home (and send out payloads of private data). You would be amazed at what some of these apps want to send over the internet for no good reason. And, rather than use a HOSTS file as a blacklist, I use it as a whitelist by populating it with all the sites I might visit. For example, using a localhost recursive DNS server, I pre-fetch all IP addresses for all the sites appearing on HN and put them in /etc/hosts. This makes reading articles posted on HN much, much faster than if using an ISP's DNS cache or some public, open resolvers like OpenDNS or Google. Again, my compliments to the author for a great use of a small form factor general purpose computer.

71 points by jwcooper 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Nicely written, very clear instructions. I'm still not sure what I think of adblocking... in some ways it makes sense that I can display what I want on my computer, but on the other hand, advertising on web pages is a legitimate and reasonably sane business idea. I don't adblock, but I do have flash on 'click to play', which does stop the most egregious and annoying ads. My guess is, in time, that ad-blocking will simply mean more javascript and html videos (possibly using that clever canvas trick that was demo'd the other day) which are impossible to stop.

Spittie 13y ago

It really reminds me of how you block ads on a router that allow SSH access (like any router running Tomato, DD-WRT, OpenWRT...). There are several guides online, like http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/all-u-need-ad-blocking.33191 http://www.linksysinfo.org/index.php?threads/all-u-need-ad-b... Anyway, I have mixed feelings on blocking ads at the router level (or using the RasbPi to block them). Those methods don't allow control, so if you need to disable adblocking for any reason, it's not something you can do just pressing a button. Also, since it doesn't work on a per-site basis like Adblock Plus, you can't disable it on sites that you want to support and use ads in a non-intrusive way.

jwcooper 13y ago
The guide does include ways to whitelist sites [1] you'd like to support (and mentions it's a good idea!) and is on a per-site basis. It pulls in an ad list from a popular site [2]. [1] http://learn.adafruit.com/raspberry-pi-as-an-ad-blocking-access-point/install-software http://learn.adafruit.com/raspberry-pi-as-an-ad-blocking-acc... [2] http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers
- tuananh 13y ago
  I think he was talking about a way to quickly toggle the ad blocker on/off.
  - jwcooper 13y ago
    Yea, I didn't write that part out, but it would be fairly easy to write a bash script to turn it on and off (and even a simple web site with a on/off button, as you are running apache in one of the solutions). You could just move the dnsmasq.adlist.conf file out of the dnsmasq.d directory, and then restart dnsmasq.d, and vice versa.
    - mnutt 13y ago
      Even better, with a Raspberry Pi, you could build a physical switch to flip to turn ads on/off.
GrinningFool 13y ago
> Also, since it doesn't work on a per-site basis like Adblock Plus, you can't disable it on sites that you want to support and use ads in a non-intrusive way. If the ads are hosted via a third party, it is unfortunately guaranteed invasive even if it's not visually intrusive.

joosters 13y ago

Instead of blocking the DNS, you are much better off running an intelligent HTTP proxy that can just filter out the bad stuff. Try installing 'privoxy' - it's available packaged for most Linux distributions. You can then use dnsmasq to push it as the recommended proxy for clients, or set up a few firewall rules to turn it into a transparent proxy.

tlrobinson 13y ago
Of course that won't work for HTTPS sites, which are becoming more prevalent (PSA: install EFF's HTTPS Everywhere: https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere)
- mux 13y ago
  On Debian you just can use these patches/packages[0] to integrate HTTPS Everywhere into Privoxy. [0]https://github.com/jvasile/freedombox-privoxy‎ https://github.com/jvasile/freedombox-privoxy‎
- icebraining 13y ago
  Some proxies (e.g. squid) include transparent HTTPS proxying; you just need to generate a certificate and add it to your browser.
  - tlrobinson 13y ago
    Does it work with Chrome's certificate pinning?
- eli 13y ago
  Privoxy does indeed support HTTPS
  - tlrobinson 13y ago
    I assume it requires you install a generated certificate? How does it handle Chrome's certificate pinning?

alexchamberlain 13y ago

Very interesting. Only flicked through, but please don't run Apache on a Pi; waste of CPU and memory, run nginx or pixelserv (as suggested).

Dwolb 13y ago
Could you please elaborate on the tradeoffs?
- alecdbrooks 13y ago
  In short, fewer features (mainly not being able to host arbitrary files) in exchange for less CPU and memory usage.
zapt02 13y ago
bigoted opinion. Apache runs fine on the Pi. Memory considerations aren't a concern when you have 512MB of RAM, and CPU difference is neglibible for these small workloads.
- alexchamberlain 13y ago
  Sorry, I disagree. Nginx is a much better web server than Apache.

D9u 13y ago

For those of us who don't have a Raspberry Pi there's AdSuck, an ad blocking DNS server from Conformal. https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/adsuck https://opensource.conformal.com/wiki/adsuck

JacobJans 13y ago

In addition to blocking ads, I suggest anyone implementing this also blocks all websites containing ads. Why? When you "say goodbye to ads" you're also saying goodbye to the source of income that pays the people who made the website. No money, means no employees to create the website, means no more website. Not everything can be open source / free. Nor should it be. People deserve to be able to make a living doing the work they do.

derefr 13y ago
> When you "say goodbye to ads" you're also saying goodbye to the source of income that pays the people who made the website. No you're not; you're just preemptively indicating your decision to be part of the "free-rider tier" of their system. Most business models aren't built on making money from every customer equally. See free-to-play games, for example: 90% of people pay nothing, 9% of people pay $10 or so, and 1% of people ("whales") pay ridiculous amounts that sustain the business. They don't want the 90% to start paying--they want the 90% to talk about "this great free game they found" to achieve a network-effect that brings more whales to their funnel. Now, if Firefox and Chrome and IE integrated ad-blockers, they'd be responsible for "saying goodbye to the source of income that pays the people who made the website." But your using an ad-blocker when you weren't in the target demographic for the ads anyway (the target demographic is always at least "is willing to click an ad" and "has money to spend") makes no more difference to the site than your voting in a non-swing state makes to the results of an election. Keep in mind: if a site really wanted to, it could detect that ads are loaded and displaying before it shows you the content. But nobody asks for this feature; goodwill toward free-riders is a necessary part of doing business.
- JacobJans 13y ago
  > your using an ad-blocker when you weren't in the target demographic for the ads anyway ... makes no more difference to the site than your voting in a non-swing state makes to the results of an election. Good luck creating an ad block software that automatically determines whether or not you are in the 'target demographic' before filtering the ad! (And if you think you're not in the target demographic because you don't spend money, and you don't click on ads, then you have a very limited understanding of the ad business.) > you're just preemptively indicating your decision to be part of the "free-rider tier" of their system. This is just a fancy way of saying "I don't click on ads, therefore it's OK to block them." That's a bad argument that reflects very little on the reality of how advertising works. > Now, if Firefox and Chrome and IE integrated ad-blockers, they'd be responsible for "saying goodbye to the source of income that pays the people who made the website." You have a good argument here. People who create and promote ad blocking software have a destructive effect on websites. They actively work to reduce the revenue generated by websites, which in turn reduces the budgets for those websites, which lowers quality. The bottom line is that websites depend on advertisements in order to exist. If you are blocking ads, then you are voting for those websites to not exist.

shawnreilly 13y ago

Reminds me of the first Project I did with my Pi (last year) except I was using Squid and two Ethernet Ports (Apple's USB to Ethernet Adapter is basically plug and play with Linux). I eventually did a Wifi version, very similar to this article. I then developed a basic Web based UI that allowed you to turn it On and Off by clicking a button. The next step was to use the GPIO Pins to hook up a physical switch that you could press to turn it on/off, but never went that far. For a while there I thought about packaging it as a Product and trying a campaign on Kickstarter, but I didn't like the idea of just repackaging someone else’s Hardware and Code and selling it as my own. Eventually someone else did their own version (AdTrap) and was mildly successful. These days I'm still working on Pi projects as a side hobby, got 2 Projects I'm working on right now. Ironically, one of them supports the Advertising Industry (but not in the way one might think), and the other has to do with Content Delivery. The only real challenge I have (and it's a big one) is taking the next step and building something for mass production. Since the Pi is pre-made, I view it as a great platform to build a prototype, but not necessarily a good platform for mass distribution of a product (from a business perspective, production cost too high). For anyone else into it, check out the new GPS chip's they're selling. Awesome possibilities! Regarding Ad's and Blocking Ad's, I have no remorse building something that gives the consumer a choice to blocks Ad's. While I do agree that Ad's can be a viable and acceptable business model, it is my personal opinion that the Advertising Industry has been abusing consumers for decades. And I find this detrimental to the Industry as a whole. I think it's about time that the consumers had a choice. I find the average (aka normal) user experience of your typical Ad (in any format) to be horrible; The Ad is basically forced on you. I also find that the Advertising Industry has little regard for the consumer's Privacy, which I do not find acceptable (as a consumer). I do think that there are innovative ways to Advertise and create a positive experience, but I don’t think the industry (as a whole) has realized/embraced them yet. It seems to me that the Advertising Industry is stuck on a model developed in the 60's, and has continued to push this old model even while technology evolves. I think it's time for the Advertising Industry to evolve. Hopefully I can test/validate this with one of my next Pi based Projects.

jingo 13y ago

I hope that readers understand you don't need a RPi or dnsmasq to accomplish ad blocking. That said, this in my opinion an excellent use of a small form factor computer: as a gateway. As a side note, what would happen if we put our own private address space "web apps" on our gateway? Voila, the added "web app" functionality that our devices expect, without the need to use third party servers on the public internet that collect personal info. In any event, if you do not have a Pi, you could just as well use any old i386 computer and any old DNS server software. I use a gateway like this not to block ads but to detect and, if necessary, stop mobile apps that phone home (and send out payloads of private data). You would be amazed at what some of these apps want to send over the internet for no good reason. And, rather than use a HOSTS file as a blacklist, I use it as a whitelist by populating it with all the sites I might visit. For example, using a localhost recursive DNS server, I pre-fetch all IP addresses for all the sites appearing on HN and put them in /etc/hosts. This makes reading articles posted on HN much, much faster than if using an ISP's DNS cache or some public, open resolvers like OpenDNS or Google. Again, my compliments to the author for a great use of a small form factor general purpose computer.