I can't hear this short-sighted comments "it doesn't load with pi-hole? then I just close the tab!"
oh really? that's how easy it is in your world? and then you just don't buy that flight ticket? because that shitty online ticket agent uses third-third-party payment providers etc. whos domain is unfortunately blocked in pi-hole? even one single incident might force you to entirely disable pi-hole. most people can't afford to play around with that until it works.
you can't seriously maintain these block lists yourself. you have to rely on a 3rd party, usually some volunteers - great people btw - but even a huge crowd like them can't make sure, that from time to time, in some part of the internet, in some specific country and language, something will be blocked by mistake and you are stuck. with a browser plugin, at least you can disable it for that specific case. with pi-hole there is no such feature. i have to disable my browser adblocker at least once a month, because something doesn't load. and its always off for sites like paypal, because I really want that payment to work and not suddenly screw up the whole transaction.
This is a surprising statement because I've used mine at home with 6+ devices and zero issues for almost two years now. It seems fair to say it's not ideal for your needs, but why say something like this that will only deter people from seeing if it works for them?
So, yes, it is possible to do this in real world scenarios.
I can't actually think of a case where I've had to disable pi-hole because a site seemed to have broken functionality. I book flights on Expedia et al all the time.
Every once in a while I want to do competitive shopping, and disable pi-hole for an hour. It's a revelation now much crud shows up (and pops up) when I do.
worried about resolving ad/tracking urls, yet ordering things via Expedia
If you don’t understand the irony here I’ll giggle even more
Also since when is giggling mean? The assumption that I intended to be mean, is kind of mean too. This is about the same as somebody saying not to eat sugar yet eating lots of fruit that contain sugars, if somebody says that to you surely you giggle without being mean.
Additionally, you can simply disable Pi-hole for temporary timeframes using the web interface as well, it has options like "Disable for 15 minutes", if you don't want to bother adding things to a whitelist.
I've used all sorts of financial, ordering, etc. sites and generally have not run into an issue. A single credit card site was one of the two I had to whitelist, and it was easy.
As a user of pi-hole, I have no issues with small scale implementations (i.e. less than 20 users) but security is more important than access to random sites for personal use in the environments I work in.
It is just is for security-prioritized environments.
The people who build websites aren't thinking about us.
I ran into that issue with some household members, that had problems with certain websites that didn't work. Since I run my own DHCP server (not through pi-hole), what I ended up doing is giving them a different (e.g. 1.1.1.1) DNS resolver for their machine (based on their MAC address), and then installing uBlock Origin for them. That way, they can easily turn ad blocking on/off themselves, while I can still have network-wide adblocking on by default (especially useful for mobile devices).
It worked great for a long time but then but changed my setup.
Then I wanted to try Pi-Hole again going through the setup again but the results were very different. For example my Samsung smart TV absolutely refused to connect. It is the same TV, same Pi device, same everything but no network.
But it's absurd.
Other crap is resetting the opt-out after a software update. And also putting the agree or disagree checkbox on a separate page than the actual terms you just read. You read it on one page then exit, look at a bunch of terms and scroll to find the matching document that has the agree or disagree checkbox for one of the TOS documents you read. It's a mess.
Never buy a smart TV just buy a monitor without any smarts.
The sound cuts out on it too you'll miss every few words almost as if it were censoring it.
I'm afraid someday it will not work if it can't update its OS.
Earnings growth for shareholders. Something-something-"advertising revolution/innovation".
It's quite obvious that it's Samsung ads as mentioned it's constant not at the start of a video like how YouTube would do it. And at odd times as if it injects every five minutes no matter what.
It's is incredibly annoying to have numerous ads in every video. I even tried to see what was going on using Wireshark but it was beyond my capabilities.
I have also found the reader view functionality on iOS to be a godsend when visiting websites, no more cookie notices, GDPR popups or banners taking up 1/3 of the display - bliss!
"Original anything" (read unique) by definition doesn't go well with the "just go elsewhere" concept. If you can go elsewhere then it's not that original or unique. Time has no bearing on this.
For "mass content" (aggregation or simply independently reporting on the same topic) you have vastly more choice today. And for unique pieces of information, only available in one place, you would have been just as stuck then as you are now. The uniqueness, not the time is what takes the choice out of the equation.
I think I've only seen that once since running pi-hole (which I've done for about six months now), so I assume the rate of occurrence varies widely with what people are browsing. Do you see it a lot on sites with a particular pattern (i.e. pertaining to a certain industry or hobby/interest)?
> and refuse to let you in
I'm fine with that. I doubt the information isn't available elsewhere if I really care about it, and the most insidious stuff I'm blocking tends to be on less important content that I can live without anyway (imgur.com was the final straw that made me install network-level blocking - too many pop-unders, the occasional drive-by install attempt, adverts trying to access my microphone and/or camera, and less worrying but still annoying things like auto-playing audio - if such frivolous sites block me for blocking their ads because they can't police them properly I'm sure I'll live!).
> a family member or co-worker can't get to a site then they have no way to bypass it unless they also know how Pi-Hole works
> Personally, I find a browser based advert/tracking blocker add-on to work better.
Other people is why I run blocking at the network level ATM (as well as on my individual mobile devices). I'd rather deal with the occasional "I can't get into X, oh, it is because of the malware/ad blocker, try somewhere else" conversations than have the tech support load of undoing drive-by installs!
Also, I wouldn't want other people to easily add stuff to my network's whitelist.
Anyone who really objects can always use their own mobile data plan instead of using my network that runs just fine the way I want it to...
> I'm fine with that.
Agreed. Sounds like the Pi-hole is working exactly as intended.
As I see it, you have a choice between viewing an ad/malware laden cesspit, or avoiding it. And by installing a Pi-hole, you have already made that choice.
>> I'm fine with that.
That's fine with me too, but doesn't cut it in a family environment. Further, some websites break with an adblocker, even when they don't have ads. E.g. Login with Facebook/Twitter, or some JS heavy sites which happen to have a bad keyword in the name of the file.
> many sites that detect that their adverts and tracking scripts don't load and refuse to let you in
>> I think I've only seen that once since running pi-hole
It used to be a daily occurence until I whitelisted sites. At least with an addon, my mum can just click the button and unblock and get on with her day.
If pi-hole could have some companion extension to make whitelisting easier that would be great.
Pihole is purely DNS, it doesn't trigger of filenames.
Especially on data capped devices like mobile phones it works wonders.
That’s false. https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Does-uBlock-block-ads...
> Especially on data capped devices like mobile phones it works wonders.
Are you implying that pihole works wonders on data-capped devices such as mobile phones? If the phone is connected to a network with a pihole, it isn’t using the capped cellular service. If it is using the capped cellular service, it isn’t going through a pihole. Am I missing something?
https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/vpn/overview/
I guess you could also setup your pihole to be externally accessible and then point your phone's DNS at it, though I'm not sure that's a particularly good idea.
That's quite an erroneous statement, especially given how easy it is to verify.
You can see for yourself by using uBlock Origin along with your pi-hole: your pi-hole will see _less_ network requests with uBO (or any other similar blockers really).
Everything which is blocked by uBO will not be seen by your pi-hole, and this simple observation contradicts your statement.
Hell, you could do a mechanical turk system and pay micropayments to 3rd world employees to crawl ad-infested crap and harvest the content for me (Or better yet, share it for the common good)
>If Pi-Hole had a webpage where you could put in a domain, i.e. cnbc.com, and it went off and loaded the html of that page, worked out all the other domains that html connects to, and then gives you a 'unblock' button to click, that would improve usability significantly, as even a non-techie user could use it.
Aren't you just describing uMatrix?
Just tell your users, if a site isn't loading properly, to go to http://my-pi-hole.local.lan/whitelist and unblock it.
Whether you want them to have access depends on your “users”.
I don't think it would be feasible for me to explain to them how to temporarily whitelist things on the Pi-Hole.
I did give the family members the password to unlock the block temporarily but after a while they simply stopped using those sites altogether.
It's also a big plus for devices that can't adblock themselves (phones, embedded devices, etc.)
https://www.hackster.io/marko8904/web-connected-aws-iot-big-...
e.g. Temporarily disable blocking for 60 seconds,
http://pihole.lan/admin/api.php?disable=60&auth= .
You can also infuriate the teenagers in the household by blocking and unblocking domains at certain times via crontab. e.g.
0 08 * * * /usr/local/bin/pihole -wild --delmode instagram.com youtube.com
0 22 * * * /usr/local/bin/pihole -wild instagram.com youtube.com
javascript:(function()%7B(function%20()%20%7Bvar%20i%2C%20elements%20%3D%20document.querySelectorAll('body%20*')%3Bfor%20(i%20%3D%200%3B%20i%20<%20elements.length%3B%20i%2B%2B)%20%7Bif%20(getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D).position%20%3D%3D%3D%20'fixed')%20%7Belements%5Bi%5D.parentNode.removeChild(elements%5Bi%5D)%3B%7D%7D%7D)()%7D)()Also that crap on the bottom of every Medium article.
With this anyone in your family can temporarily disable it to unblock themselves if needed.
It kind of already has this. Just tail the log in the web admin, then hit the site in your browser. Unblock the sites that were blocked on that request.
I've been using pihole for a year and have only had one site that refused to load. Was pretty easy to figure out which request it was and whitelist it.
At least it can until those apps start to use their own hardwired DNS/DoH server...
Seriously, just stop. It's the only way we're going to move to something less damaging and invasive than the current ad/data economy.
I should note that I do pay quite a lot for journalism and art via subscriptions, Patreon, Kickstater, etc, but I'm not going to tolerate sites clogging up search results with paywalled articles or piles of tracking scripts and media downloads.
Apart from a few non-important edge cases literally every major site works without problems with a pi-hole. I think 'simply stop using sites that refuse to work unless they can track you' is a very valid and workable solution.
Personally, I find a browser based advert/tracking blocker add-on to work better.
If Pi-Hole had a webpage where you could put in a domain, i.e. cnbc.com, and it went off and loaded the html of that page, worked out all the other domains that html connects to, and then gives you a 'unblock' button to click, that would improve usability significantly, as even a non-techie user could use it.