AdAway vs ProtonVPN vs Firefox+ublock etc

VeryStableGenus@reddthat.com to Android@lemmy.ml – 19 points –

Hey all, so I used Blokada (5, I think) for a long time but then when they forced an upgrade I moved on to AdAway. AdAway is great, it's not perfect, but it gets the job done.

I decided to give ProtonVPN a try, due to recent state legislative website laws. I like it, it's cool but it doesn't block ads in the free version and AdAway can't run at the same time, afaik.

I've heard lots of people talking about how great FF with ublock is and I only recently switched back to Firefox so I'm considering giving that a try but I'm getting overwhelmed.

What is the right combination to block most ads as well pretending to be from another state?

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Firefox with uBlock Origin should always be your starting point. It's not an either/or thing. I use ff+ubo and NextDNS for two layer ad filtering. There's literally no need to choose.

Silly question how are you using nextdns?

  1. Android Private DNS
  2. Official Nextdns app (DNS over HTTPS)
  3. Via a third party app (ex rethink, etc)

Also how often do you encounter nextdns being blocked on public/coreperate wireless networks?

Option 2

I never use wifi outside of my home. I have unlimited cellular data, so why would I bother?

Official Nextdns app (DNS over HTTPS)

Curious why do you use the nextdns app over optioin 1? Is it because your phone doesn't support Android Private DNS or for another reason?

I never use wifi outside of my home. I have unlimited cellular data, so why would I bother?

Fair. I guess its more helpfull in cases of poor cell reception or traveling (though I guess this is a edge case in its own right).

Firefox with uBlock Origin should always be your starting point.

Except Firefox is not secure on Android.

Avoid Gecko-based browsers like Firefox as they're currently much more vulnerable to exploitation and inherently add a huge amount of attack surface. Gecko doesn't have a WebView implementation (GeckoView is not a WebView implementation), so it has to be used alongside the Chromium-based WebView rather than instead of Chromium, which means having the remote attack surface of two separate browser engines instead of only one. Firefox / Gecko also bypass or cripple a fair bit of the upstream and GrapheneOS hardening work for apps. Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API.

https://grapheneos.org/usage#web-browsing

UBlock Origin will block content within Firefox, and do a better job at it than AdAway. AdAway tries to block ads on the whole phone, including embeded ads in a lot of apps. But unless you root your phone, you can't run AdAway and a VPN at the same time.