I would like to pirate on my phone sometimes and the ads on websites are problem. I’m not newbie, I know I can install firefox and get the uBlock on it but firefox android is a little bit slow so I prefer to use Opera browser; opera has an ad blocker but it’s a joke compared to uBlock. I’m in a restricted country and my phone is not rooted, so if I use ad block apps like AdAway or Adgaurd they need to create a VPN connection in order to function unless the phone is rooted, and that VPN connection doesn’t let me to enable another VPN in order to visit filtered websites or apps.
I’m not stuck, but felt if I ask here there may be another smart solution for ad blocking on android that can solve these small problems; and the solution would help other people so be kind and provide what you have.
Pihole for network wide ad blocking (no ads on all apps on all devices within the LAN) then self-host a vpn to keep your phone within that lan.
Tis what I do at least.
Blocks pretty much everything except Youtube, and Twitchs video ads as they serve their own ads from their own domain’s as well as things like sponsored posts on reddit/twitter/facebook.
Don’t watch much Twitch, Youtube (re)Vanced is a thing, and Twitter/FB/Reddit can all die in a fire. So none of those are issues for me either.
This is exactly how I’ve been doing it. Pihole + Wireguard. Set your pihole device as your DNS on everything ya want. It’s shocking how much crap tries phoning home. Especially smart TV’s and streaming sticks(Roku ex).
I went one further and defined my pihole as the DNS IP that the dhcp server hands out; then set iptables rules on the router to block all external dns access except for the pihole.
If you’re on my LAN, you must use the LAN DNS server, or you will not get DNS resolved at all. Enforcing ad and telemetry blocking network wide.
How often do you run into issues with certain sites (stuff like banking or Netflix) not liking the blockage? I’m considering doing this bit the WAF needs to be high and not cause her grief or block her from accessing specific stuff.
I’ve had 0 issues with things I want to access being blocked, but if you do want to access a blocked site you can add it to the whitelist via piholes web interface in about 30 seconds (manually or just finding it in the history and clicking ‘whitelist’) or you can disable blocking entirely for 5sec/30sec/5min/indefinitely with 2 clicks (or a custom time).
I considered doing exactly that, but I was afraid of the battery usage, with wireguard always on… Do you have any feedback on that part ?
Hosting a vpn also gives me secure remote access to my various self-hosted services like Radarr/Sonarr/SABnzbd/qbit/etc, without directly exposing them to the open internet.
Upon re-read I realized you’d like to use a comercial vpn as well (for bypassing restrictions in your country).
You can setup your self-hosted vpn to work in tandem: Your phone stays connected to your own vpn keeping it part of your home LAN, then you setup the device hosting that VPN to also connect to a comercial VPN, routing all LAN traffic headed to WAN to instead go over that comercial vpn escaping the restrictions in your country.
Tailscale ftw!
I use tailscale as a mullvad client. Really happy with both.
This, but I personally use Adguard Home + Unbound instead of Pi-Hole + Unbound. Adguard Hone also open source, but it runs as a single service instead of 2. You can easily update it from the web interface when there’s a new release, which makes things easier.