

AdHole: A simple, transparent ad and tracker blocker in Go - Artemis2
https://github.com/drbig/adhole

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drbig
I didn't realize this made to Hacker News...

As for the current comments:

* Using hosts file is a local, per machine solution. Similarly, AdBlock is a per user per browser solution. None of which may be available on your phone. And AdHole is not meant to be a replacement for anything - it's another tool.

* I have a very restrictive list, including some CDNs known to host tracking software. Surprisingly it breaks none of the websites I use regularly. For the odd cases I implemented the /debug/toggle method. At this low-level there will always be a trade-off between blocking and breaking.

I also use AdBlock on all the 'big computers', but my block list is still more
restrictive. And the biggest value is that I get ad and tracking blocking on
all my Android gear without doing any additional work.

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andreasvc
It's simpler to just use a hosts file for blocking ad domains. A HTTP server
serving replacement ads is optional. An adblocking proxy only becomes
necessary once you start rewriting the contents of pages.

I used to use AdBlock but nowadays I only use a hosts file (one from
[http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/](http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/zero/)
) and I haven't noticed any ads that don't get blocked, while memory usage is
lower and performance higher.

~~~
derefr
The main thing ABP does for me is to filter out things that match the
"signature" of an ad (image tags with size matching standard ad-sales sizes)
even when they're hosted on the same domain as the origin.

------
scrollaway
This is interesting.

I wonder what the long-term efficiency of blocking trackers/ads by DNS is.
There will be a point where these things could run on the same networks as
other things which you wont necessarily want to block. What if google began
serving its ads from google.com for example?

What are HN's thoughts on this? I'm tempted to run an ad blackhole service on
my router or dnscrypt server; it's a line I haven't investigated yet as
adblock + privacy badger do the job just fine on Chrome.

