Hey everyone, I’m still pretty new to using my GrapheneOS phone and have been slowly transitioning to a more privacy oriented technology lineup than I previously did.

I searched for clients on Google and found “Total Adblock”, “Adblock”, and “Adblock Plus” but I’m not quite sure how to audit an adblocker for security flaws or malicious intent. I also would prefer to install apps through the F-Droid store and learn how to compile from source code on mobile (if that’s possible on GrapheneOS or if that’s even something desirable)

Thanks for any help! Been lurking a lot on Lemmy and have really enjoyed the energy in the community. Definitely has made learning Linux and the countless times I’ve had to fix my Arch system much more enjoyable. GrapheneOS has been quite stable too other than the phone having interfacing problems with my cellular provider’s network…

  • Bizarroland@kbin.social
    30·
    1 year ago

    If I were you I would set your phone’s DNS to dns.adguard.com.

    You may want to double check that by searching it but adguard has a DNS server that will block the majority of ads from ever hitting your phone regardless of where you are, kind of like having a pi hole on your phone.

    • SiyahGuraag@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      1 year ago

      I have a question. If I set my Phone’s DNS to that address, will it affect my internet speeds in any way? Slowing it or boosting it? I already have sucky internet and don’t want my speed to be slower due to that private DNS.

      • justastranger@sh.itjust.works
        7·
        1 year ago

        No, it’s not a VPN. Your traffic does not go through it. All using it does is change which server that your device asks for IP addresses for the websites you visit. When your device asks for the IP for an ad, Adguard gives you one that points back to your device and prevents the ad from being loaded. Otherwise it acts like any other DNS-Over-HTTPS server.

      • Bizarroland@kbin.social
        1·
        1 year ago

        I’m not 100% certain. I think the difference is the adguard app also adds in some in system protections in exchange for battery life because it’s always running. I didn’t much care for the app but the DNS service has been perfectly fine for my casual use.

    • _TK@lemmy.antemeridiem.xyzEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Is there a reason you recommend forks of Firefox rather than the official version with the same add-ons enabled? Firefox already has support for Ublock and will have full desktop add-on support soon.

    • gronjo45@lemm.eeOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      Thank you for all the great suggestions! I’ve been slowly implementing a potpourri of the recommendations I’ve gotten across tech in my life so its been quite exhausting the past month trying to digest it all.

      I love the DNS.adguard.com pihole! I started using it about 3 weeks ago and its made my mobile browsing experience so much better. It was perfect to see all those terrible ads and popups that just make it distracting and impossible to read vanish into smome. Not to mention redirects and videos I didn’t want to play…

      Just checked out Fennec and Droid-ify and is there a particular reason Droid-ify was written entirely in Kotlin? I only recall that Kotlin was named after the island near St. Petersburg, but that’s it… I only started using Arch Linux about 3 months ago as my daily driver and used Windows for 18 years prior. Been hard to unlearn a lot of habits instilled from undergrad from my shitty Python and MATLAB courses + decades of Windows usage.

  • Asudox@lemmy.world
    7·
    1 year ago

    I searched for clients on Google

    Before adblock, how about changing your search engine?

  • Pantherina@feddit.de
    7·
    1 year ago

    Custom Nextdns. For the Browser, Mull with Ublock. Vanadium sucks, it may be good for security but has no privacy features whatsoever. What website works without Javascript? Bullshit. Noscript on Firefox is so much better.

  • §ɦṛɛɗɗịɛ ßịⱺ𝔩ⱺɠịᵴŧ@lemmy.ml
    5·
    1 year ago

    Incorporating it into your DNS as bizarroland@kbin.social said is a great option. The Mull browser from F-Droid allows uBlock as an add-on but is just browser specific. Setting up both would be a fantastic approach for overall mobile privacy.

  • stuck_in_the_shell@programming.dev
    5·
    1 year ago

    As far as I remember adaway is the og adblock for android, it is available on f-droid and pretty much the only app that I used since ever, and one of the few reasons I still won’t let go of rooted phones, https://adaway.org/

    On top of that I would recommend you to run your own DNS server with unbound, add to that pi-hole and wireguard and you have your own pi-hole set-up on any device you want.: https://docs.pi-hole.net/guides/vpn/wireguard/overview/

  • chayleaf@lemmy.ml
    5·
    1 year ago

    For the browser, use Firefox (Fennec or Mull in F-Droid) with Ublock Origin. For anything else, honestly if the app has ads you should avoid using it anyway.

    • gronjo45@lemm.eeOP
      1·
      1 year ago

      Any advice on adjusting to a search engine like Searx or enhancing how to use DuckDuckGo since Fennec comes with it?

      Is there a gospel-like resource on Search Engines and using particular query delimiters? Just been tough reading some of these documentation pages with legion jargon words

  • INeedMana@lemmy.world
    4·
    1 year ago

    Adguard DNS is nice but sometimes you need to let some app pass. I’ve switched to blokada. Sadly they’ve pulled the app from f-droid but version 5 is available on github

    • Breezy@lemmy.world
      2·
      1 year ago

      I still use blokada 5, but more and more ads keep getting through. Its nothing like it was a couple years ago. Id love to find something better.