Browser and adblocking solution - suggestions?

ivicaivica

Hi all,

what browser do you prefer for your GOS? Vanadium, Brave or something else?

I love Vanadium but I still can't find a proper way to block ads and trackers. Tried couple of private DNS but the results are lacking to be honest.

What browser do you use for your "daily casual surfing" and which one for login stuff?
How do you block adds?

Thank you.

[deleted]

ivicaivica A recommended is to either use Private DNS (DNS-over-TLS) server with support for blocking ad domains or let your VPN do the content filtering. I use VPN with content filtering alongside Vanadium and NewPipe for opening YouTube links. Gets me through the day.

Resonate0765

ivicaivica yeah I mostly use vanadium for my more sensitive stuff (banking, email, etc...) for everything else I use fennec with ublock origin but thinking of trying mull next. I kinda jumped ship from chromium based browsers, with the exception of vanadium, because of the whole google being google fiasco. Like others said a dns solution would also be a good idea.

N1b

Brave as main (begrudgingly, don't like some stuff about it but it's best in class for anti fingerprint which is set to "strong") and Vanadium as a backup since my Brave setup breaks some sites. I used to love Bromite until it became obvious that it's not well maintained update-wise.

I also have ad blocking via VPN (both Mullvad and IVPN depending on the device) and thanks to them there are no ads on Vanadium for me. You might want to try NextDNS if you don't use a VPN service, I've heard many good things about them. Also NewPipe Sponsorblock for YouTube. The only ads I get are audio ads in Podcasts (Antennapod).

Edit: Added info

[deleted]

N1b You might want to try NextDNS if you don't use a VPN service, I've heard many good things about them.

They're great, but better than account with them is no account with someone else (AdGuard DoT, Mullvad DoT or someone else). Latter make it easier to blend in too as lists are standardized.

casualmilkenjoyer

I use Mull with ublock for general use, but Vanadium for one off searches. They both get about equal time in a given day.

concrete

If you're looking to block ads while browsing the Internet, Brave is probably the simplest solution. As for blocking trackers, there's actually a good reason Vanadium doesn't make an effort to do this. See, most of the time so-called tracker blockers only block stuff from known tracker domains. However, this is insufficient to meaningfully block tracking; the tracking code can be hosted first-party, or these multi-million dollar ad companies can just spin up new domains that aren't on the tracker blockers lists at any time. To meaningfully reduce the capacity for you to be tracked across the web, it's more meaningful to use a browser that creates a crowd for you to blend in that you don't customize - Tor Browser and (to a lesser extent) Vanadium do just that. The GrapheneOS usage guide provides some insight into this here: https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing

Matth

I have installed a pihole at home. That works like a charm and filters a lot out. On my phone I use a Wireguard VPN to home, which then uses the pihole as well while on the road. The Raspberry Pi with pihole also hosts the Wireguard VPN server. For the pihole I also use unbound to resolve the upstream DNS myself.
The Wireguard VPN is very stable, doesn't need much more battery and I can hardly feel a difference to having it on or off (besides the ads). This way, I'm not leaving any traces with 3rd party providers (DNS service, VPN) but only my Internet provider at my home gets to see my traffic details.