Diversion Diversion - the Router Ad-Blocker

[XIII]

I’m also running uBlock Origin on my PC.

I would love it if the author supported Safari (on macOS & iOS) as well.

 

[Thomas Szücs]

^^^
Have you forced all your DNS traffic to go thru the router? In some cases, these "SmartA&& apps" hardcode their own DNS servers into the app... to be sure you see their crappy ads. Sometimes there's little you can do about that...

LAN > DNSFilter > Enable DNS-based Filtering > ON --> Router.

View attachment 26171

Thanks.
It was not enabled, so I did that. But I'm still having ads. I should be working on my old SmartTV, since I have used Adblocking DNS on it. What other settings do I have to to set in the router?

 

[JaimeZX]

Well that's pretty epic. I have uBlock on another machine but annoyingly Firefox is kind of broken on my laptop. Only runs in Safe Mode for some reason... so zero extensions. :/ But this might be additional fodder to try and fix it...

 

[router_master]

I've had a problem with the Facebook app for Android for a month or so. If I want to read an article on FB in the application, I get the error like in the attachment. They are different domains. What do i need to unlock?

 

[Lucrat]

I'm in the process of switching from pi hole to diversion just to simplify things on my network and also because of the youtube ad blocking. I know that the youtube ad blocker has to "learn" what the googlevideo ad domains are by letting the ads play then adding them to a blacklist so I've been letting youtube stream in a background tab for about 24 hours now and I'm up to 38 domains in the blacklist but I'm still getting ads between almost every video. Is there kind of a general rule of thumb for how many domains need to be in the blacklist before ad frequency starts to drop?

 

[JaimeZX]

I've had a problem with the Facebook app for Android for a month or so. If I want to read an article on FB in the application, I get the error like in the attachment. They are different domains. What do i need to unlock?

You can try a couple of things. Go into the SSH Diversion menu and use follow the dnsmasq.log on option 2, 3, or 4, and then try to load your pages. If you get a bunch of red entries then they're getting blocked there, and you can whitelist them if necessary. You can also go into the Skynet 12-1-1 (Debug) menu to look for connections blocked by the firewall and whitelist them if necessary.

I'm in the process of switching from pi hole to diversion just to simplify things on my network and also because of the youtube ad blocking. I know that the youtube ad blocker has to "learn" what the googlevideo ad domains are by letting the ads play then adding them to a blacklist so I've been letting youtube stream in a background tab for about 24 hours now and I'm up to 38 domains in the blacklist but I'm still getting ads between almost every video. Is there kind of a general rule of thumb for how many domains need to be in the blacklist before ad frequency starts to drop?

I dunno man. I still get tons of Youtube ads. Finally fixed my Firefox and the uBlock Extension seems to keep them at bay. Where are you seeing the auto Youtube blacklist?

 

[Yo_2T]

I'm in the process of switching from pi hole to diversion just to simplify things on my network and also because of the youtube ad blocking. I know that the youtube ad blocker has to "learn" what the googlevideo ad domains are by letting the ads play then adding them to a blacklist so I've been letting youtube stream in a background tab for about 24 hours now and I'm up to 38 domains in the blacklist but I'm still getting ads between almost every video. Is there kind of a general rule of thumb for how many domains need to be in the blacklist before ad frequency starts to drop?

Mine's at 200 or so but I still see Youtube ads every video. DNS blocking for YouTube ads is a futile endeavor. You should just use an adblocking extension on your browser.

 

[thecheapseats]

Well that's pretty epic. I have uBlock on another machine but annoyingly Firefox is kind of broken on my laptop. Only runs in Safe Mode for some reason... so zero extensions. :/ But this might be additional fodder to try and fix it...

there were several branches of ublock... ublock origin is the one you want (if you manage to fix firefox)...

 

[JaimeZX]

Yeah; the last page of this thread motivated me to fix it. No ads today!

 

[gspannu]

Yeah; the last page of this thread motivated me to fix it. No ads today!

Any way to get uBlock working on Safari in macOS.

 

[Centrifuge]

uBlock

Way off topic, but there is an Ublock extension for Safari (fake ublock origin), its junk. I had problems with Firefox on osx also, ended up reformatting the drive and fresh install of osx, the conversion to APFS from HFS+ left some residual and hard to diagnose problems. Firefox flies after that, and the real Ublock origin is fresh, it is no longer being developed for Safari afaik.

 

[weslsew]

By looking into the Syslog.

what specifically am I looking for? Rebooted router yesterday morning and ads weren't being blocked when I woke up today...

most recent log entry is:

Sep 14 05:20:04 Diversion: rotated dnsmasq log files

before that is:

Sep 14 02:00:09 Diversion: started second Dnsmasq instance for alternate blocking list
Sep 14 02:00:09 Diversion: restarted Dnsmasq to apply settings
Sep 14 02:00:46 Skynet: [#] 309169 IPs (+0) -- 1763 Ranges Banned (+0) || 157 Inbound -- 0 Outbound Connections Blocked! [whitelist] [36s]
Sep 14 02:00:54 Diversion: updated Medium (primary) blocking list from 2 hosts files, 92696 domains are now blocked
Sep 14 02:00:54 Diversion: hostslist file empty, not updating blocking list [yes, my secondary block list is supposed to be empty]

before this looks like just diversion booting up

 

[Lucrat]

Mine's at 200 or so but I still see Youtube ads every video. DNS blocking for YouTube ads is a futile endeavor. You should just use an adblocking extension on your browser.

I typically use uBlock in my browser but I have it turned off right now so I can train diversion. Really what I'm after is blocking youtube ads for things like smart TVs, Rokus, etc, where I can't run uBlock. If you have any suggestions there I'd love to hear them.

 

[New2This]

Running 7 blocking list atm in diversion and have 144 ads blocked in YT.....Yes some are still getting through, but its still learning
On my firestick I do have apk of Adguard running, which seems to be helping there also

 

[bluzfanmr1]

Any way to get uBlock working on Safari in macOS.

Apple removed the ability to use those type of apps awhile back. You will still see some in the App Store but they are useless.

 

[XIII]

Any way to get uBlock working on Safari in macOS.

"Safari Web Extensions" might offer new opportunities for uBlock Origin on Safari.

For now you would have to use a content blocker, like AdGuard for iOS.

(And /) Or use Diversion...

 

[AntonK]

I typically use uBlock in my browser but I have it turned off right now so I can train diversion. Really what I'm after is blocking youtube ads for things like smart TVs, Rokus, etc, where I can't run uBlock. If you have any suggestions there I'd love to hear them.

You don't need to turn uBlock off to train Diversion. Diversion is on the router and sees the ads before they get to your browser.

 

[thelonelycoder]

You don't need to turn uBlock off to train Diversion. Diversion is on the router and sees the ads before they get to your browser.

Actually, the browser extension prevents outgoing domains in some cases which then get caught in Diversion.
Diversion blocks outgoing requests, not incoming.

 

[AntonK]

Actually, the browser extension prevents outgoing domains in some cases which then get caught in Diversion.
Diversion blocks outgoing requests, not incoming.

Thanks for the clarification!

Do you then recommend turning off browser-based adblockers to better 'train' Diversion and its YouTube blocking feature?

 

[TheLyppardMan]

I have a few questions/observations.

For the first time, I entered a group of whitelist domains based on a wildcard and in the process I was prompted to change the setting below from the default 20 to 1.

It became apparent however that at least one of the several whitelisted domains were still being blocked. However, when I reset item 2 back to the default 20 setting, the whitelisted domain was no longer blocked. Can anyone explain this to me and also, what exactly does changing the value of item 2 actually do?

Two other quick questions, why would I have to connect to youtube before setting up the experimental ad-blocking feature and is there anything I would need to be aware of if I decided to try out this feature?