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0 pointstmpz225y ago0 comments

That's ironic given some of the best possible ad blocking on mobile devices is Ublock Origin on Firefox mobile which is only available on Android (Apple only allows third party browsers to wrap Safari on iOS). Its 2020 and the only modicum of privacy you can get is a rooted android device.

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lucb1e5y ago

TrackerControl is also a great app (available on F-Droid[1]; probably also on the Play Store but I wouldn't know) that works without root. It blocks a blacklist of known tracker domains and you can turn them on/off per-app.

For example, does your HackerNews app need to talk to Google? Probably not, so that gets blocked by default. Does your Newpipe/YouTube app? Yes, so you should unblock that from talking to Google. The Spotify app also tries to talk to like 9 different tracking domains, but only one category is actually required to fully use the app. Screenshot: https://dro.pm/n.png (Current version doesn't yet allow toggling per-domain in an attempt to make it easier/more manageable; but iirc allowing that is a planned change.)

The app is under active development and the dev seems to listen to feature requests, so if you have any... :). One downside is that it doesn't work alongside other VPN apps because it pretends to be a VPN. If anyone has a good idea how to solve that, the dev asked for ideas if I remember correctly.

I already blacklisted advertising domains in /etc/hosts and disabled things like broadcast listeners so certain apps don't receive the OnBoot/OnAppInstalled/etc. events to limit what they notice and can do, but with TC I feel like my privacy on Android got a substantial boost. Spotify was the last app I use with Facebook integration and I was wondering what to do about it, but I think that is not an issue anymore now.

[1] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.kollnig.missioncontrol.f...

Tarq0n5y ago

Blokada is a similar local-vpn adblocker available on F-droid. It uses the same block lists as browser adblockers, so much less configuration is required.

I don't currently use an iPhone (contemplating jumping ship as well), but my understanding is you can get similar functionality on there using AdGuard.

jamroom5y ago

Yeah but that only blocks browser based ads - what Apple is doing here is blocking trackers at the OS level - this is what FB is complaining about since their SDK allows the device to be tracked - not just browsers.

lostmsu5y ago

Does Android SDK let the device to be tracked?

glasshead9695y ago

iOS has many ad blockers which work as well as Ublock. 1Blocker for example. On top of it these blockers don’t need to read contents of the site to block ads.

pseudalopex5y ago

uBlock Origin can filter HTML elements. That includes script tags. It can replace scripts when blocking them breaks pages. Safari content blockers can't work as well.

rmrfrmrf5y ago

It's really not a big deal.

fsflover5y ago

> Its 2020 and the only modicum of privacy you can get is a rooted android device.

There is also Pinephone with pure GNU/Linux and killswitches.

TACIXAT5y ago

That is a good point. I switched from Chrome to Firefox for ublock, and I use Firefox Focus regularly. That will be sad to lose moving to iOS.

WhyCause5y ago

Firefox Focus is on iOS; I use it as an ad-blocker in Safari, and to view the occasional Instagram or FB page. It does a pretty good job of blocking ads, even though it's restricted to using WebKit.

robenkleene5y ago

Just FYI Firefox Focus is also on iOS. (And it also acts as a third-party content blocker for Mobile Safari, though it’s no uBlock Origin.)

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