Online advertisements steal your data, waste your time, significantly worsen your browsing experience and most important of all, they can expose you to some very nasty malware. In fact, this is how most people end up with malware on their devices. Therefore ad-blockers have become a necessity in the modern web. There are levels to ad-blocking and if you go deep enough into this rabbit hole you can avoid seeing all ads, anywhere and anytime.
Very useful if you want to block ads on a network level, also can
help with filtering malware and/or adult content.
You can change your DNS through your router’s settings or on a per
device basis.
You can use a public DNS server like AdGuard DNS.
Or host your own DNS server with ad-blocking, it’s more private and
customizable, can block more ads with custom blacklists but it’s a lot
more involved.
For that I would look into Pi-hole,
But beware thay heavy filtering may break some sites.
DNS ad-blocking has some limitations, for one you don’t have access to every network you connect to, and it cannot block everything. For that, we’ll have to use other methods on a per device basis.
If god forbid you’re using a modern version of Windows, you might encounter ads in various locations of the UI. You can disable most of these ads through the settings. For a quick and easy solution I would recommend you check out OFGB.
If your software serves you ads, delete it and find better software. No matter how good you think the software is, you deserve better and there’s always a better alternative. Look for software that is open source and/or will respect your privacy.
You can use a browser with built-in ad-blocking, but I don’t recommend it. They are either bloated, meant for privacy obsessed nerds, or have shady marketing. I don’t care which browser you use because they all suck; just make sure it has extension support, so you can install ad-blocking extensions on it.
By far the best browser extension for ad-blocking is uBlock Origin. It works on most browsers, is open source and customizable. If it doesn’t work on your browser, switch to one that it works on, I can’t recommend it any more.
If you watch a lot of YouTube, uBlock Origin will block YouTube ads, but sponsor segments are also technically ads and you can block them with SponsorBlock, which automatically skips sponsors, self-promos, reminder spam, and even jumps straight to the interesting parts of the video saving you a lot of time. If you end up loving it, consider contributing to the skip segments, it’s completely crowd-sourced, and your input helps others save time.
If you’re hesitant because you think ads will help support your YT creators, this video by Louis Rossman might change your mind.
If you like SponsorBlock I would also check out DeArrow by the same developer; it cuts through clickbait titles and thumbnails so you can actually see what the video is actually about.
User scripts are small pieces of JavaScript that run in your browser to enhance your browsing experience. You can find many enhancement options for popular sites as well as scripts that block sponsored posts from social media sites and much more.
You can find them in user scripts repos, most notably Greasy Fork, OpenUserJS, and GitHub.
To install them you will need a user script manager — a browser extension that runs the scripts on specified websites and lets you manage them easily. I would follow Greasy Fork’s guide to install the correct one for your browser.
Just get off your phone.
I don’t use my phone much and I don’t have an iOS device so I can’t really provide a proper guide, so I would recommend you go through the Android / iOS section on FMHY.
But in short, if you’re on Android use Firefox + uBlock Origin and use Modded APKs and Alternate Clients for social media apps. If you’re using a Chinese phone and see ads in your system, you can disable most if not all through the settings. Also look into changing your App Launcher.
If you’re on iOS, I would check out Orion Browser and Stay for Safari. I would also look into iOS sideloading, it’s not as simple as doing it on Android but it could open a whole new world for you.