Ad Blocker Robustness
The Ad Blocker is not very good, even with Strict setting.
The following should be added?
- Blacklisting
- Whitelisting
- Using External lists/dns to provide a more thorough solution
Websites are getting smarter in recognizing if you have an adblocker addon. There has to be a solution to this. Anyone try Pi-hole? Is that a better solution?
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You can add some lists like OISD and DShield Block List as rules to your LAN config. I think there's a way of adding external lists too.
I find that the Ad Protect and native Family Protect are quite useful. For some things you'll need a browser plugin or a browser like Brave though.
Here we go:
https://help.firewalla.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500005941962-Firewalla-Feature-Target-Lists
Personally, I'm not so much opposed to ads themselves as that I know that the various ad services are a bunch of clowns when it comes to security, plus some of them directly try to track you and harvest your data for resale. I've heard quite a few times about ad services getting infected by someone and then proceeding to shove malware at everyone being served their ads.
I feel that Firewalla's built-in features do a pretty good job of protecting me from tracking and malware. Then I use the Brave browser whenever I can for more protection.
I used pi-hole at one point, but it was a constant PITA and a couple developers I trust looked at it and said the code looked like it had been written by kindergarten students. I moved on to other things instead. :-)
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I have a Pi Hole and update the lists daily. Currently, I am blocking 378,037 URLs. Works like a charm. Sites load faster and the screen clutter is gone. I use an on-demand Wireguard connection on all my devices when away from home so I get the same create performance everywhere! Every now and then I need to add a URL to the approved list due to strange blocking on a new site I need to access.
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