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Comment by pmontra | Hacker News Reader

I've been using Blockada for many years but that's a firewall against ads and trackers. No ads inside apps.

Ideally I would use NetGuard to block the apps and Blockada to block ads and trackers for the apps that I allowed to perform network traffic in NetGuard. But Android allows only one active VPN and they can't be chained, so it's a hard choice. Actually it's not so hard: I keep blocking ads and trackers.

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Blockada is most likely a DNS level blocker, netguard supports that. Alternatively you can configure it to point the DNS servers at NextDNS if you just want a nice UI to configure block lists (though NextDNS might track you).

NextDNS as a manual DNS server on Android is the adblocking solution I've been using for years. Is there any reason to believe they would track you, any more than any other DNS provider?

Unlike most other dns providers, they often have an account or even payment to identify you, not just your outbound IP....

Do they keep logs though?

That's the whole point, you don't know if they keep logs.

NetGuard does ad-blocking with a DNS blacklist, but it's a Pro feature (which I use and works great).

On NetGuard's F-Droid page it lists "Optionally block ads using a hosts file" under its "features" section and not under its "PRO Features" section

Seems like I can get ad blocking for free.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/eu.faircode.netguard/

https://github.com/M66B/NetGuard/blob/master/ADBLOCKING.md

Oh you're probably right, it's been a while since I was on the free version :)

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