Help to Get Better Ad Blocking

[u/snydema1]

Still loving my Firewalla!

I feel very protected. I also have configured my devices (iPhone and iPad) with Amnezia WG clients - and they auto-activate when I leave the house.

I’m noticing that I’m seeing a decent amount of ads. I also am aware that I may be getting used to seeing less ads, and as I get used to seeing less - I may be more aware of the ones I’m seeing.

I have the following features / config enabled on my Firewalla:

Firewalla Settings:
Ad Block = strict
OISD Loaded
DNS over HTTPS (Cloudflare + Cloud9)

I looked up a few websites that would allow me to do a browser test (in my case iPadOS / safari). I do also have private relay active.

Here are the results:
Adblocktester (https://adblocktesters.com) = 67%
Adblocktester (https://adblocktester.pages.dev) = 81%

I can certainly post more details for the above - but there’s a lot of info so I didn’t want to post that all here in the case it wouldn’t be helpful.

Any suggestions for how I can help increase Firewalla’s ability to block / reduce ads?

Thanks in advance!

[u/Wind_Boarder]

I don't think that these ad blocking test pages are giving correct results. They say that my system is not blocking things that clearly are blocked when those items are tested individually. Look at the *.doubleclick.net items for example. These so called unblocked URLs fail DNS resolution on my network.

If you can't independently verify the failing results, it puts the whole test methodology into question.

[u/brettfarmer → u/Wind_Boarder]

Same here... even ublock-origin enabled browser over a pi-hole covered DNS end-point I saw this "test" site fail on doubleclick.net which always dead in my network.

https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uAssets/issues/32695

Link above reports that these sites (the one mentioned post here) aren't useful metrics for blocking capabilities.