Posted August 31, 2016
thomq: What about using a firewall to block ads? I was looking into that yesterday myself.
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Anybody know how to do a simple configuration to block a single address or hostname, or deny all and allow only one or a small list? With "pfctl" in particular? I'd like to use what comes with the computer without having to install extra fluff, and avoid micromanaging huge lists. Is that perhaps not feasible? Yesterday I couldn't find any examples of something so simple. So maybe ultimately it doesn't work out well?
Yes, I tend to favor this kind of approach, avoid unnecessary layers of complexity, but in this case what you're trying to do has some drawbacks and IMO the added complexity of a browser extension is justified. Please consider that: ...
Anybody know how to do a simple configuration to block a single address or hostname, or deny all and allow only one or a small list? With "pfctl" in particular? I'd like to use what comes with the computer without having to install extra fluff, and avoid micromanaging huge lists. Is that perhaps not feasible? Yesterday I couldn't find any examples of something so simple. So maybe ultimately it doesn't work out well?
- Blocking outgoing connections, the browser will still try to connect to the ads sites, only to see how the connections fail and probably show you lots of errors. Also, I haven't tried it, but I'm guessing here that the browser might block on those connections before failing. The extension, on the other hand, will prevent those connection attempts from happening at all.
And even if the browser fails silently and doesn't block, well, it will still be nagging me as inefficient every time I load some page :-D
- Those "huge lists" are huge for a reason. If you start blocking individual sites, besides taking ages, by the time you finish you'll probably have your own huge list to micromanage, and it won't be any fun with ads sites changing all the time. I prefer to let others with more time and interest in the topic to take care of that.