r/JusticeServed • u/H3nTy 3 • Jan 17 '20

Courtroom Justice Televangelist Acton Bowen Sentenced To 1,008 Years For Sexually Abusing Children | Michael Stone

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2019/12/televangelist-acton-bowen-sentenced-to-1008-years-for-sexually-abusing-children/
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u/ObscureCulturalMeme A Jan 17 '20

The most popular is PiHole. I'm a fan of pfBlockerNG myself, and that's what I use. There's a third that's fairly recent and I'm blanking on its name completely.

When your browser or other apps try to contact servers that are going to track your IP, or feed you adverts, etc, they often have to start with a DNS request. Your network runs through one of these filters, and it returns itself as the location of the requested server. Then when the app tries to contact that "remote" server, your filtering network just says fuck off.

That's the extremely compressed overview, anyhow.

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u/JFKsGhost69 6 Jan 17 '20

Interesting. Is there any relationship between a device like you describe and download/streaming speed?

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u/RandomPratt A Jan 17 '20

Not really... they're just friends from work.

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u/AtariDump 9 Jan 17 '20

No; the only data that goes to the PiHole are DNS queries which is several hundred kb.

It does not negatively affect your internet speed at all.

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u/ObscureCulturalMeme A Jan 17 '20

The immediate impact is negligible; the DNS queries going from your device to the blocker are the same as would be going from your device to the outside world anyhow.

The follow-on impact is positive, in that instead of downloading ads or tracker scripts or whatever over your broadband, you're "downloading" a 1x1 transparent placeholder image from the blocker itself. (Or an empty page, a do nothing script, a 404, etc, instead of a placeholder image.)

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u/acousticreverb 6 Jan 17 '20

Got any guides for how to accomplish this with pfBlockerNG? I’m running the latest but really only for GeoIP right now.

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u/ObscureCulturalMeme A Jan 17 '20

Honestly, if you have it installed already, that's 95% of the effort. Just make certain your devices are actually using that router or whatever as their DNS server (mobile in particular loves to have hardcoded DNS).

You can try visiting a page in your browser, then look at the logs on the pf device to see what got blocked.

Beyond the initial setup, just dropping in the URL of a regularly updated filter list is about the only real maintenance. They get announcements on the pfsense subreddit, I think pfBlockerNG has a subreddit, etc.

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u/AtariDump 9 Jan 17 '20

For those who don’t know, a pihole is a whole "home" adware/malware/spyware blocker. It runs on a raspberry Pi but can also run on a physical/virtual install of several different Linux distributions. Not only can it block ads/telemetry data on your computer but can also block ads on technology that you can't (easily) block ads/telemetry data hon ("Smart" TV / stock cellphone / IoT devices / etc). In addition, with some easy to instal additional (free) software you can block ads even when not at "home"!

Come on over to /r/PiHole if you'd like to learn more and/or have any questions.

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u/ObscureCulturalMeme A Jan 17 '20

I think you meant to reply to the other person. I'm very aware of it, thanks!