While watching some FreeNAS related videos one video piqued my interest in this project but with the supporting branch of FreeNAS ( Corall ) being rolled back to the not supporting one ( 9.10.x ) I sadly wasn't able to give it a try so for now I'm waiting until the necessary Docker component arrives to the 9.10.x series sometime down the road.
That being said... How does THIS form of Ad Blocking work on Websites that retaliate against ad blocker users by either not showing their content as a whole OR displaying even more annoying content in place of where normally the ads would reside? Would it still trigger them? I assume it would probably trigger them even more so as from my understanding this form of ad-blocking doesn't remove it after it was downloaded but actually won't download them to begin with?
To have contents displayed and deactivate such ads, which are just not simple banner display, you need a license to raft in the river of outbound connections, a license which only you could issue yourself! The degree of imposition of such a retaliation depends on you.
Technologically, you make a browser call which is a hyper text transfer protocol http. All these websites serve their content on http. Regarding contents either they impose authentication or don't.
If there is some authentication mechanism imposed, you have no chance, If not, then there is some javascripts configured to make viewing of contents difficult for a normal user. Here, that's where your rafting skills are important. You could see which DNS queries made and deactivate them. In addition to this, you could deactivate some of these javascripts, if possible.
Here is a good example of a german website:
They have both imposed: login and javascripts. I can deactivate the javascript with a plugin uMatrix to view the login-free content. But the PLUS content they offer I cannot. Obviously, after deactivation of javascript, the pages looks unrendered.
Fundamentally, pi-Hole is not a content blocker and will not parse anything in the http files.
Pi-Hole is a simple DNS blocker. When you make a http/https call in the browser, the next thing would be to make a DNS resolution of that URL. Pi-Hole will interchange the IP address of that URL, if the domain name called upon is in the block list.
After interchanging the IP address, it will offer a default page from the pi-Hole server to inform you that the URL has been found in the block ads database as well as allow you to rectify it, if that URL was wrongly blocked.
Thats it. It does nothing more.
Currently, my pi-Hole database is 140 Megabytes and has about 4 Million domain names in it. Thus, I have a DNS blocker database to intercept these calls and block them.
You got me interested in your suggestion but I found it to reduce protection on the systems. May be you could help me if I misunderstood.
The uMatrix allows a fine grained control of all elements of files on that URI called upon, javascripts, plugins, cookies, etc. Beyond that, it allows to exclude all other FDQN (external) too, for e.g. google analytics, if one wants too. Overall, there cannot be anything beyond that, which one could control.
The anti-adblock-killer allows all these to be turned off completely, right?
Currently, I could simply find out under uMatrix by reloading that URI what is necessary to turn off restriction imposed to view the content on that FQDN. By turning it off with the anti-adblock-killer, one opens all these controls to outbound connections to the FQDN in question entirely, right?
But then, what is the advantage, I wonder? (PS: I am just trying to follow and understand the function of this plugin ...)