This is sorely lacking a mention of fingerprinting.
I also strongly disagree with the conclusion: every link in the chain is responsible for the whole as they don’t exist in a vacuum and are responsible for what happens with the data they collect; none of it “is (or seems) legit.”
And since the article ends without it, here’s a call to action for you to do something about it :)
While not perfect, DNS with privacy (AKA ad blocker) lists helps a lot. In my case it’s hosted at home, and I connect through a VPN. It’s actually just my LAN DNS. Pi-Hole and Adguard DNS are the big players. I use and have contributed a bunch to Blocky.
For a quick win on mobile, you can get an app that runs the server on your device. I’m not well informed about these but Adguard (Android, iOS) is a popular choice.
The next big step up is using a privacy HTTP proxy like Privoxy or Privaxy. That’s more invasive since it requires TLS interception and traffic redirection which also has performance implications, but you basically get uBlock Origin for your whole system!
TIL about Privoxy and Privaxy! Fun fact: Zscaler classified the Privoxy website as “anonymizer”, blocking the site in certain companies which use the Zscaler proxy for all outbound traffic.
Agreed on DNS. I personally switched from a self-hosted solution (PiHole and WireGuard) to a paid NextDNS, and it works great, without the maintenance overhead.
+1 for Adguard DNS. You can set it up on your home router, but modern Android and iOS devices support DNS over HTTPS too so you can chuck in the adguard domain on your phone and block tracking at the DNS level no matter what network you’re on.
This is sorely lacking a mention of fingerprinting.
I also strongly disagree with the conclusion: every link in the chain is responsible for the whole as they don’t exist in a vacuum and are responsible for what happens with the data they collect; none of it “is (or seems) legit.”
And since the article ends without it, here’s a call to action for you to do something about it :)
While not perfect, DNS with privacy (AKA ad blocker) lists helps a lot. In my case it’s hosted at home, and I connect through a VPN. It’s actually just my LAN DNS.
Pi-Hole and Adguard DNS are the big players. I use and have contributed a bunch to Blocky.
For a quick win on mobile, you can get an app that runs the server on your device. I’m not well informed about these but Adguard (Android, iOS) is a popular choice.
The next big step up is using a privacy HTTP proxy like Privoxy or Privaxy. That’s more invasive since it requires TLS interception and traffic redirection which also has performance implications, but you basically get uBlock Origin for your whole system!
TIL about Privoxy and Privaxy! Fun fact: Zscaler classified the Privoxy website as “anonymizer”, blocking the site in certain companies which use the Zscaler proxy for all outbound traffic.
Agreed on DNS. I personally switched from a self-hosted solution (PiHole and WireGuard) to a paid NextDNS, and it works great, without the maintenance overhead.
+1 for Adguard DNS. You can set it up on your home router, but modern Android and iOS devices support DNS over HTTPS too so you can chuck in the adguard domain on your phone and block tracking at the DNS level no matter what network you’re on.