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by pbk1 2198 days ago
Can someone ELI5 why PiHole is preferable to an in-browser blocker like AdBlock Plus?
3 comments

It's a single chokepoint for all DNS traffic on my network. So I do not need to configure any device or application to use it. For instance, my piece of crap Roku stick benefits from all the same ad blocking that my mac, iphone, etc... do.

There is also a lot that goes on outside of your browser. It blocks tracking logic embedded inside other things, too. For example, my TV cannot phone home to Samsung anymore to tell it what I am doing.

You can get really wild with firewall rules to truly prevent any DNS traffic from escaping your physical network.

Some not very technical reasons:

1) Run once, use everywhere. (Including devices without a browser, like an Android/Apple/'smart' TV.)

2) iPhones.

3) Configure alongside rest of networking, not clicking buttons to manually sync within browsers of the same type.

iPhones can run DNS blockers locally[1], and Apple has a good API for privacy-preserving content blocking[2].

[1] https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/dnscloak-secure-dns-client/id1...

[2] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/safariservices/cre...

Sure, but that's not (or equivalent to) AdBlock Plus, which is what I was replying to.

Specifically, iPhones cannot do in-browser content or domain blocking if the browser is not Safari.

Pi hole blocks at the DNS later, so non-browsers are also affected, e.g. IoT devices.