# How Do I Block Ads And Companies Tracking Me Using FreeBSD As A "Black Hole" For Ads Of Sorts?



## RedPhoenix (Jul 8, 2019)

First, I tried following this guide: https://www.protoxin.net/setting-up-a-freebsd-dns-adblocker/
Now, everything worked, except that I'm still seeing ads and being tracked. What am I missing?  Do I have to start over from scratch?  I installed everything from freshports.org.  Thanks for any help guys...  To be clear, it's not ads I mind, it's the ones I see that track me and sell my information to third parties, and of course, there's the creepy ones that track RIGHT where I am.


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## tommiie (Jul 8, 2019)

This has nothing to do with FreeBSD. It's all about the application. Did you check out projects like Pihole? Their goal seems to be exactly what you're trying to accomplish.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jul 8, 2019)

You need to find something else to do with your time. While you're wasting your time with this, your credit card company, bank, favorite restaurant, and bowling alley sold everything they knew about you long ago and are still tracking you to this day number 24601.

Yes, that's how they ID you. You are #24601 and there's a little man sitting outside your house, right now, tracking your every move.

While you are doing that, I went to the Anheuser-Busch brewery tour with my son and new daughter-in-law. We also had great BBQ beforehand and came home to eat a wonderful chocolate cake I made from scratch.


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## RedPhoenix (Jul 8, 2019)

drhowarddrfine said:


> You need to find something else to do with your time. While you're wasting your time with this, your credit card company, bank, favorite restaurant, and bowling alley sold everything they knew about you long ago and are still tracking you to this day number 24601.
> 
> Yes, that's how they ID you. You are #24601 and there's a little man sitting outside your house, right now, tracking your every move.
> 
> While you are doing that, I went to the Anheuser-Busch brewery tour with my son and new daughter-in-law. We also had great BBQ beforehand and came home to eat a wonderful chocolate cake I made from scratch.


Did you come from USENET? I'm talking about practical things, methods that are actually used to track me. I'm not paranoid, but practical. How does your family put up with you? You come on here, assume I'm a tin-foil-hat-wearing nutjob, tell me there's a little man outside my house, and pull some number out of your butt and use it to attack me. You need to find something else to do with your time. Consider actually being helpful, and maybe keep your head out of the whiskey bottle before you post random, unhelpful garbage Online.


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## RedPhoenix (Jul 8, 2019)

tommiie said:


> This has nothing to do with FreeBSD. It's all about the application. Did you check out projects like Pihole? Their goal seems to be exactly what you're trying to accomplish.


At least YOU tried to be helpful. The guy below you is just plain-old mean. :\ I did check out Pihole when I ran an Ubuntu Server, but ended up messing everything up. I'm curious as to how to get this done, and since I was trying it out on FreeBSD with FreeBSD-specific Directories and settings, well, here I am. Still, I appreciate your help.


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## RedPhoenix (Jul 8, 2019)

drhowarddrfine said:


> You need to find something else to do with your time. While you're wasting your time with this, your credit card company, bank, favorite restaurant, and bowling alley sold everything they knew about you long ago and are still tracking you to this day number 24601.
> 
> Yes, that's how they ID you. You are #24601 and there's a little man sitting outside your house, right now, tracking your every move.
> 
> While you are doing that, I went to the Anheuser-Busch brewery tour with my son and new daughter-in-law. We also had great BBQ beforehand and came home to eat a wonderful chocolate cake I made from scratch.


Your Reaction Score is quite high. How many other people did you flame?


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## tommiie (Jul 8, 2019)

Pihole is, as far as I know, a simple package to be installed and works right away. No manual configuration or anything. If that did not work for your, my guess would be that such tutorials explaining how to do _everything_ yourself, will be even more difficult. I would really recommend trying to get pihole to work first. And only then brew your own setup if pihole does not really do what you need.


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## RedPhoenix (Jul 8, 2019)

tommiie said:


> Pihole is, as far as I know, a simple package to be installed and works right away. No manual configuration or anything. If that did not work for your, my guess would be that such tutorials explaining how to do _everything_ yourself, will be even more difficult. I would really recommend trying to get pihole to work first. And only then brew your own setup if pihole does not really do what you need.


Well, it makes sense.  I'm into getting knee-deep into how things work, and I consider this a learning experience. I only posted this question for some help, not be told I'm a whackjob.


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## obsigna (Jul 8, 2019)

RedPhoenix, the post behind the link which you have given is missing an important point, namely, we need to feed unbound with all the domains which shall be neglected. In addition the advices to use either a local IP or inform_deny as the DNS response for a domain to be blocked is less than useful. In the first case you might run into problems when you run a local server, and in the second case the DNS request times out, usually after 10 seconds, and might block some threads of the browser.

Both issues are overcome in my dns/void-zones-tools, look at the usage instructions on my GitHub page (there I am Cyclaero) https://github.com/cyclaero/void-zones-tools. Some people present on the forums tried this successfully. In case of any issues with the void-zones-tools, feel free to ask questions here.

For setting-up unbound have a look at this post: https://obsigna.com/articles/1408390004.html (German) and/or its translation to English https://www.translatetheweb.com/?from=de&to=en&a=https://obsigna.com/articles/1408390004.html


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## MarcoB (Jul 8, 2019)

I recommend the above mentioned dns/void-zones-tools from obsigna. Works really well.


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## Lamia (Jul 8, 2019)

What you are now faced with is getting the IPs, domains, zones etc to block.

Script build host to block directly from unbound. It is based on work of https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

Also inpired by this blog post : https://deadc0de.re/articles/unbound-blocking-ads.html


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## drhowarddrfine (Jul 8, 2019)

RedPhoenix said:


> I'm talking about practical things, methods that are actually used to track me. I'm not paranoid, but practical.


I did mention practical things and spending all this time trying to avoid being tracked is not practical. This is based on two points. 1) They've already got you and 2) Nobody tracking you cares about you.


RedPhoenix said:


> assume I'm a tin-foil-hat-wearing nutjob


I do not think you are a nutjob. Far too many people come here--everywhere for that matter--wearing a tin hat. Once in a while, it wears on me, too since I ran a web dev company for so long and I tracked people all the time. Still don't have a clue who they are. Still don't care. It was all about marketing to person #24601 and I couldn't care less about anything else than if they purchased something.

Which is what all the tracking is about. Marketing. No one cares who you are, what you're doing or where you're going. They only want to sell you product. Nothing more. To be concerned over this is a complete waste of time. I've said that before and I'm repeating it now.

If someone really wants to get you, they will, and my marketing data won't help them. 

This is all helpful advice. I'm making a point, sometimes using a hammer. Not belittling.


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## RedPhoenix (Jul 8, 2019)

obsigna said:


> RedPhoenix, the post behind the link which you have given is missing an important point, namely, we need to feed unbound with all the domains which shall be neglected. In addition the advices to use either a local IP or inform_deny as the DNS response for a domain to be blocked is less than useful. In the first case you might run into problems when you run a local server, and in the second case the DNS request times out, usually after 10 seconds, and might block some threads of the browser.
> 
> Both issues are overcome in my dns/void-zones-tools, look at the usage instruction on my GitHub page (there I am Cyclaero) https://github.com/cyclaero/void-zones-tools. Some people present on the forums tried this successfully. In case of any issues with void-zones-tools, feel free to ask questions here.
> 
> For setting-up unbound have a look at this post: https://obsigna.com/articles/1408390004.html (German) and/or its translation to English https://www.translatetheweb.com/?from=de&to=en&a=https://obsigna.com/articles/1408390004.html


Thank you for helping me and not being a jerk.  I'll follow the guide again, and


drhowarddrfine said:


> I did mention practical things and spending all this time trying to avoid being tracked is not practical. This is based on two points. 1) They've already got you and 2) Nobody tracking you cares about you.
> 
> I do not think you are a nutjob. Far too many people come here--everywhere for that matter--wearing a tin hat. Once in a while, it wears on me, too since I ran a web dev company for so long and I tracked people all the time. Still don't have a clue who they are. Still don't care. It was all about marketing to person #24601 and I couldn't care less about anything else than if they purchased something.
> 
> ...


Sigh... Alright, since you put it like that. But the hammer isn't always necessary. I assure you I don't wear a tin hat, so-to-speak. I just value my privacy, and I think that's a reasonable expectation. You're right. Not everyone is Dr. Strangelove sipping a Martini looking at targets. But as I said elsewhere, I've been doxxed. That's not very fun. Also, I'm interested in DNS and how things work, not to mention, all those Scripts running in the background are taxing on System resources. There's more to it than "they're out to get me and I don't know why." I'm sorry for what I said earlier.


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## RedPhoenix (Jul 8, 2019)

MarcoB said:


> I recommend the above mentioned dns/void-zones-tools from obsigna. Works really well.


Yeah, I'll check that out.  But I'll need to redo things, as I don't want to end up with config Files scattered about everywhere. Makes it hell for Sysadmin work down the road.


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## RedPhoenix (Jul 8, 2019)

Lamia said:


> What you are now faced with is getting the IPs, domains, zones etc to block.
> 
> Script build host to block directly from unbound. It is based on work of https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
> 
> Also inpired by this blog post : https://deadc0de.re/articles/unbound-blocking-ads.html


Yeah, I figured as much.  I'll check those links out. Thanks!


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