[regexnerd]

It is basic tracker blocking. You can and should be doing more.

I run a Pi-hole on a Raspberry Pi and highly recommend it. It's blocks ads, beacons, trackers all at the DNS level. The crap never even has a chance to come down to your PC because it's never called. Easy to set up, takes about 30 minutes from start to finish. I couple this with my finely-tuned Firefox with uBlock Origin, Dencentraleyes, Privacy Badger, Webmail Ad Block, and No Coin. This is defence in depth. I never see anything resembling ads, beacons, or trackers.

The Pi-hole is highly configurable. You can add lots of blacklists to the already very capable list that is on by default. In addition, you can watch, in real time, all the calls being made and tune as you see fit. I was shocked to learn that my router, as well as other software, was phoning home. I nixed this behaviour on the Pi-hole immediately. It's a real eye opener to see what the software and devices on your network do and to whom they talk. The Pi-hole blocks bad crap for all devices on your network. You can even set up a free VPN on your router and use it for your mobile devices whilst your away from home.

The Pi-hole has become an indispensable tool on my network and I really think every person who cares about security should employ one for no other reason that it truly allows you to monitor your traffic in an easy-to-follow set of charts and traffic logs that are configurable. Well worth the time and little money involved.