Happy to have pi-hole it blocks almost most of the ads
However, I noticed even when I visit the most basic news website, there are established numerous connections to social media services which are probably tracking me and slowing down the browsing experience.
To make clear how bad the situation is here is my Top Domain list of the Pi-hole Webinterface: platform.twitter.com 118 www.instagram.com 109 www.facebook.com 107 platform.instagram.com 104 connect.facebook.net 99 staticxx.facebook.com 97 discourse.pi-hole.net 97 www.google.at 93 www.paypalobjects.com 91 instagramstatic-a.akamaihd.net 89
(I never actively visited any social media platform!)
Can I do something about that?
I have several blocking lists for tracking in the config file. Interestingly the tracking blocklist of DisconectMe seems not to block these services while the firefox add-on does.
I would be very thankful if somebody had a solution
Thanks in advance!
Since we block at DNS level, in order to block the pingbacks for www.instagram.com we'd have to fully block www.instagram.com and most users wouldn't like that too much. We don't inspect the traffic as we aren't a proxy, so you may want to use us in combination with in-browser blockers to catch the in-stream ads that we are unable to block currently.
But isn't there a list out there that blocks these services? I mean I'd be willing to pay that "price" of blocking some "legitimate sites"/one could still white list them manually (if really needed).
You can block them now with Pi-hole, however you wont be able to visit www.facebook.com or www.twitter.com or www.google.com. It's a steep price to pay.
You can, but if the advertisement comes from facebook.com, and not a subdomain, then you can't block just the adverts. We don't have a way of telling what is in the html stream, as we never see any of that.
Sure, but the OP was asking about www.facebook.com as well as staticxx.facebook.com. If you can isolate those as being only ad-serving, then your experience isn't impacted. But blacklist www.facebook.com and you won't see any ads, but then you won't see facebook either .
I don't use Facebook at all. So I will add www.facebook.com to the domainlist. But will websites who reply on Faceook (buttons, comments, or login) continue te work or will they be messed up?
I use Twitter and Instagram so I cannot block those. But if there are more domains to block I would be happy to add them to my config.
@PromoFaux: I would like those rules from Privacy Badger inside Pi-Hole, so they work on my whole network (and apps!).
Blocking social networks doesn't always benefit for anyone and for all. Second, you can't block instagram through mobile data exchange, as facebook and instagram are the most popular information sources, people even using additional services ( Instagram Auto Comment Free | Zen Promo ) to improve their accounts, cause lot of people are making money from it.
These could be some spam site created in most cases, spammers create these kinds of sites themselves often mocking top level and trusted domains.It's also the ad server for facebook. In this case it is legit but in most cases it's just plain spam.
