Spoiler alert: it’s a Pi-hole

How does the Pi Hole work though? The Pi Hole answers your computer’s DNS queries and if it is a domain on the blacklist, it sends the request to the Pi Web server. This Web server just serves up a blank page. So instead of loading the ad from the real domain, the blank page from the Pi is downloaded, thus “blocking” the ad or metric.

How effective is the setup, in practice?

Statistically speaking our household is averaging 15% of queries blocked and a spike over a bad weather weekend of 30% blocked. It is scary and incredible to think the number of ads and metrics forced upon us, and this number continues to increase. I am delighted with the Pi Hole project and am recommending it to all.