Block ads and trackers across your network with Pi-hole
Conclusions
Pi-hole reliably prevents network-capable domestic appliances from opening connections to known trackers and thus transmitting usage data. Conversely, this does not mean that Pi-hole always prevents tracking. For example, if your fridge insists on sending data to the vendor's server, you might need to discover the vendor's address and add it to your blacklist manually.
Having said this, it was clear – after a few days – that smartphones and network-aware multimedia devices were benefiting from the Pi-hole server's privacy filter. The domains most frequently blocked included both the typical ad networks, but also analysis tools that specialize in acquiring user data from mobile devices. And the Pi-hole put an end to the verbosity of a Samsung TV set, as well as a set of Sonos active speakers, without needing any additional configuration overhead.
In terms of the web browsing experience on a PC, Pi-hole offers slightly less than a full-blown ad-blocking add-on like uBlock Origin. The classical ad blocker is more convenient to configure, and it accelerates rendering of the page more than the Pi-hole DNS filter left to its own devices. You can achieve optimum results with a combination of an ad blocker and Pi-hole. This combination improves the loading times of many websites, reducing them to a fraction of the time taken by the unfiltered originals. At the same time, Pi-hole filters out ads and trackers from the data stream, even if the devices or programs themselves do not offer filtering options.
Infos
- Pi-hole: https://pi-hole.net/
- DNS Sinkhole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_sinkhole
- OpenDNS: https://www.opendns.com
- Quad9: https://www.quad9.net
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