this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
287 points (98.6% liked)
Privacy
32177 readers
244 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Have you tried AdAway it can block ads in apps
That uses local VPN mode which would not allow me to use Proton VPN.
Proton VPN does have tracking and ad blocking integrated, not sure how good it workes as i usually use my pihole
Ah I see you ain't rooted
If you dont mind me asking - how would root improve this Situation? (I've got little to non knowledge about rooting)
Besides it being more effective at blocking ads and trackers it won't require a VPN connection to work
This, you don't have to even run a program. Every phone uses the host file all day all the time anyway, you're just telling it to load nothing instead of usual behavior of "no it's not hosted here, go get it online" you're just saying "no, don't go get it, it's hosted here" except it's not, so it isn't retrieved at all.
It would give you access to the host file Before anything connects to the internet, it checks the host file to see if the address is already located there. (Why download it again if it's already stored locally?) So one can use the host file to list all the ad networks you done like and POOF all those ads are gone (unless you're actually hosting them from your phone, but you're not so it will return null)
The problem is, the host file is a system file you can't access without root access. Try it on your home pc 🖥 https://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm
thx!