Using a VPN as an adblocker?

[airborne]

Using a VPN as an adblocker - Is that possible, anyone tried it?

The VPN would provide the abblocking hosts filtering, one drawback I can foresee is sometimes you need to disable adblocking for some apps or services to work, a work around would have to disable the VPN in that instance which isn't to arduous. Root and Adaway is the best option but rooting isn't always possible or feasible.

 

[Adoxographist]

Adblock creates proxy on your device to filter all ads.
https://adblockplus.org/en/

Or you can get firefox on your android and get adblock add-on

 

[airborne]

Adblock creates proxy on your device to filter all ads.
https://adblockplus.org/en/

Or you can get firefox on your android and get adblock add-on

It doesn't work very well and doesn't block in-app ads.

 

[DA-LION-619]

Why would anyone offer a proxy or VPN for free to block ads...

 

[Claymore]

Try Block This! - it seems to work pretty well.

 

[SauRoNZA]

Adfreetime?

 

[airborne]

Try Block This! - it seems to work pretty well.

Seems a bit dodgy aswell, no statement on how they maintain your anonymity?

Why would anyone offer a proxy or VPN for free to block ads...

No decent fast vpn is free

Adfreetime?

Never heard of that, what's it about?

 

[Claymore]

Seems a bit dodgy aswell, no statement on how they maintain your anonymity?

As I understand it, it's a DNS service, rather than a VPN, as such.

 

[airborne]

As I understand it, it's a DNS service, rather than a VPN, as such.

The way I understand it is they are using DNS as the ad blocking method but to get that benefit are rooting your traffic through their servers or else how would they manage to block ads system wide incl in-app?

 

[SauRoNZA]

The way I understand it is they are using DNS as the ad blocking method but to get that benefit are rooting your traffic through their servers or else how would they manage to block ads system wide incl in-app?

Well not all your traffic, just your DNS traffic.

Much like OpenDNS does with Spam/Malware blocking.

 

[airborne]

Well not all your traffic, just your DNS traffic.

Much like OpenDNS does with Spam/Malware blocking.

Block this app installs a vpn on your phone?

 

[SauRoNZA]

No it's a DNS entry only.

It's not an app or a vpn.

 

[airborne]

No it's a DNS entry only.

It's not an app or a vpn.

How does that work, it's an off device service, not an on device dns blacklist? They specifically mentioned they run a server to manage the traffic.

 

[SauRoNZA]

How does that work, it's an off device service, not an on device dns blacklist? They specifically mentioned they run a server to manage the traffic.

If you own the DNS you can point it where you want.

So same as a local hosts file you just do it on the DNS server and blackhole the traffic you don't want or point it elsewhere.

So they run a server yes, but it only manages DNS.

All your hosts file does it resolve FQDN'S to IP's.

Using a VPN for that would effectively make a DNS server of your VPN but a very expensive and unnecessary one.

So use only a DNS server instead. Cheaper and faster and way more efficient.

 

[airborne]

So it resolves the DNS requests but all the traffic still goes like normal via 3g or wifi on the device?