adblocker

Now, one would think that the best way to get rid of them would be to get an adblocker, like Adblock. It can be added as an extension to Google Chrome or a phone app. As great as these ad blockers are, there are better ones out there. The adblocker only works on the single device it is installed on and also relies on someone else's service, which could require a monthly subscription, although most are free. One of the two biggest drawbacks to using ad blockers are that they only work on the single device you are using and only on the single browser that they're on. 

Now of course, there is an alternative to this, something that combines privacy and security with the added benefit of costing less and working better. Created as a free open source project, a Pihole is a black hole for advertisements, which instead of blocking on a single device, functions as a network wide adblockwe. The PiHole can block banner ads on websites, as well as mobile ads in apps for IOS, Android, and Smart TVs, essentially, every ad on every device in the entire house. 

From using the pihole myself, I have 850,000 individual domains blocked. These include ads, like the ones we see online in daily use, as well as things we don't see like activity and telemetry trackers. Further, I have websites associated with malware and phishing blocked. This does not prevent the malware sites from being available to click on, but if I were to, they would be inaccessible. 

The pi in its name comes from the Raspberry Pi, which is the type of computer that the PiHole software most commonly runs on. I however, use my PiHole as a virtual machine on Proxmox. When I first set up my PiHole I used Debian, a distribution of Linux, but after an upgrade in February it simply stopped working, so I moved to Ubuntu, a different Linux distribution. The Pihole software acts as an app in the operating system, so the base operating system makes no real difference as long as it is compatible. Ubuntu proved to be easier to use and faster to set up. Essentially I started with installing Linux, creating a username and password, and proceeded to tell it to download PiHole from the pihole website. This step is as simple as typing in the words “install pihole from install-pihole.net” 

A pihole is remarkably accessible to just about anyone, the Raspberry Pi foundation sells Raspberry Pi’s at $55 a piece. With a very low power draw, their operating cost is next to nothing. As someone with a high level of technological knowledge, I firmly believe that someone who knows nothing about technology could easily set it up by simply following a Youtube tutorial. I did this exact thing without having any idea what I was doing, I  just did what the tutorial said it worked.