Hacker News Reader

but you have control on the vpn side.

i still have one question in a forum about why Android browser's ignore etc/hosts, and every now and then (question is 6 years old) people comment how shocked they are to discover that is the case (still!)

View on HN

No you don't. How would you filter traffic based on apps on the vpn side?

Or feature? I'd love a firewall rule that could block any traffic that contains my contact list. Wouldn't be possible even if the traffic wasn't encrypted...

Sure you could - have a contact on your phone called something like 000-alarm and filter any requests containing that string. Its not foolproof, but it certainly isn't impossible.

Maybe scatter a few of these contacts through the alphabet to catch apps sending in batches.

That doesn't help if they are encrypting the data before sending it.

As responsible developers they wouldn't want to send your entire address book across the wire in the clear, would they? Why, someone could easily listen in and then you would have no privacy! /sarcasm.

Like fixing a boat hull with duct tape. Totally possible if you don't care about water in the boat.

> i still have one question in a forum about why Android browser's ignore etc/hosts

To make it harder to write an ad blocker

Reply on news.ycombinator.com