Our house is almost ad free. I have pihole set up to block most third party ads and trackers for anyone on our wifi (which blocks ads in mobile apps), have uBlock origin on our browsers, and I use firefox (actually fennec) on android with ublock origin installed.

I used to think billboards were my main source of ads but now I work from home most of the time so don't see as many.

We are a pretty low-TV household compared to others, so even product placement is hard to get us with. Probably the most effective advertising for me is companies paying supermarkets to get their product at my eye level on the shelves.

It makes Christmas difficult. My kids have no idea what they want because they don't have anything telling them what they should want. They mostly just ask for more of what they already have.

[–] absGeekNZ 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I also run PiHole at the network level, uBlock origin and Firefox. But I also have privacy badger ("learning" privacy blocker from the EFF) and trocker (for email trackers).

We don't have a TV so the kids don't see many ads at all, they ask for book and things they have already. Occasionally there will be discussions about what other kids are playing with at school.

As for supermarkets, I get given a list and I shop to the list (if I am the one shopping), no exceptions. It really shortcuts the impulse to buy the eye level stuff. I ask myself "is it on the list? No, then it doesn't go in the basket"

[–] Dave 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I used to run privacy badger, but there are issues with making you more easily fingerprintable covered in detail here, so learning is off by default and it's using static lists just like uBlock origin.

As I understand it, the general consensus is not to use Privacy Badger if you are also using an ad blocker like uBlock origin (see here).

As for supermarkets, I get given a list and I shop to the list (if I am the one shopping), no exceptions. It really shortcuts the impulse to buy the eye level stuff. I ask myself “is it on the list? No, then it doesn’t go in the basket”

When I'm looking for "something for tea" or "something for the kids lunches", sometimes browsing shelves is easier.

[–] absGeekNZ 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I like coming to Lemmy and seeing nothing blocked by uBlock Origin.....go to Gmail >1k, Google calendar 503; ChatGPT 13

[–] Dave 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I've almost completely moved away from google. But ofen those huge numbers are from retries. It got blocked so it tries to reload it, gets blocked so tries to reload, etc. When I first set up the pihole something like 30% of requests were blocked. Now that's right down to under 10% and I haven't changed anything.

[–] absGeekNZ 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have been considering moving my email away from google, but the shared calendars with others are an issue.

[–] Dave 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I use google shared calendars but not email, but I think in terms of email trackers using alternate clients helps. I use FairEmail on Android and Thunderbird (or BetterBird) on my computer.

I also use Firefox Relay for disposable email addresses, which can remove trackers from emails and stop you being tracked across sites. The downside is I can't start an email from an alias, only reply to one, so if I order something and put the email in then they only send me a confirmation from a donotreply email, I have no way to email them from the alias to find out why they haven't sent my order.

So for now I mostly use it for accounts and email lists and not for purchases.

[–] absGeekNZ 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For anon email I use OnionMail and fantasy name generator.

For stuff I want to keep, I add a myEmail+serviceName@gmail.com to see who is tracking / selling my details / getting hacked. I can easily block the service name that leaked my details.

[–] Dave 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The thing about that + trick, is it's very easy to strip from the email.

What I like about Firefox Relay is the browser extension that makes it easy to generate new ones and will remember which site you did it at. I also wanted an excuse to financially support mozilla.

But there are heaps of others, Proton, (who bought simplelogin), Anonaddy, duckduckgo operates a free one, etc.