Kill ads on your mobile
HOW TO GET RID OF THOSE BANDWIDTH-SUCKING ADS IN YOUR BROWSER AND MOBILE APPS.
ALTHOUGH WE’VE REACHED the point where most of us have more than enough monthly broadband data to satisfy our needs at home, download quotas on mobiles still tend to be a squeeze. Most of us run afoul of our data limits sooner or later, and that means either paying ridiculous excess charges or being forced to fork over extra for data packs.
Ads are big part of that. A sizeable chunk of the data we download is likely to be ads that we didn’t ask for, but our mobile decided to download anyway. These are ads embedded in websites, as well as in mobile apps and games.
So this month, we thought we’d look at a few ways to stop those ads — first, in your web browser, and then for all your mobile applications as well.
BLOCKING ADS IN YOUR BROWSER
It’s actually very easy to block ads in your browser now. Most of the major mobile browsers — Firefox for Android, Safari, Opera — have easy options for adblocking. The very notable exception is Chrome, which still lacks add-ons on mobile. If you want to block ads in Chrome, you have to look for a global ad-blocking solution, which we’ll touch on in the next section on blocking ads in apps.
Opera is the easiest of all. It has an ad-blocker built in. In the settings, you’ll find a Block Ads option. Just enable it and you’re good to go.
On Firefox on Android, all you need is to download an ad-blocker add-on. We like uBlock Origin, but AdBlock Plus is also a popular choice. Tap on the menu button on the top right and find the tools menu item. Then select the Add-ons option, which will open a page to search for Add-ons. Then just do a search for uBlock Origin and install it.
In Safari on iOS, what you’ll need to do is install and enable an ad-blocker from the App Store. Popular options include Crystal, 1Blocker, Purify, AdBlock and AdGuard. We presently like AdGuard, mostly because it’s completely free and we’ve found it works really well, but you can grab and install the app of your choice.
You’re not quite done, however. You still need to enable it for Safari. Go to your iOS’s device settings and find the Safari settings. Then, under General settings, find the Content Blockers menu item and tap on it. You’ll see a list of all the content blockers you have installed. Then tap on the switch to enable them for Safari.
With the ad-blocker enabled, your web browsing experience should now be mostly free of ads. But there’s more that we can do. We can also set up what is, in effect, a global ad-blocking solution that will even work for many of the ads delivered in apps.
AD BLOCKING IN APPS
If you commute to work and play games to pass the time, then there’s a pretty good chance that a large chunk your monthly quota gets sucked up by obnoxious video
ads that play in between levels of free games you’ve installed. Every time one of those animated ads loads, you can virtually feel your monthly quota being sucked dry. Thankfully, it is possible to kill those ads — but it can be a bit trickier than removing browser-based ads.
In general, ad blocking for mobile apps is accomplished using domain name service (DNS) trickery. DNS, if you recall, is the system that converts URLs like
techlife.net into IP addresses that computers can understand. You can stop your mobile from even talking to ad services by modifying your DNS settings so that the domains of known ad servers are invisible to your mobile device. If your phone or tablet can’t find the ad service, it can’t download ads.
For example, if you’re using a mobile app with embedded ads, that app might try to reach out to admob.com to download your next set of ads. But instead of telling your mobile the real address of the ad server, the DNS system would instead point to an empty page. Thus it can’t find the ad to download.
When you’re on Wi-Fi, it’s actually quite easy to take the mobile ads out. You just go to your Wi-Fi settings, change the DNS settings to manual, and then enter this IP address as your new DNS server: 176.103.130.130.
That’s the IP address of the AdGuard DNS server ( adguard.com), a special DNS service that returns null results for most common ad services, including most services that provide in-app ads for mobile applications. It genuinely works — most of the mobile apps that we tested with in-app advertising worked just fine, but the ads were eliminated.
But the thing is, it’s not when we’re on Wi-Fi that we really want to remove the ads. It’s when we’re connected to 3G/4G that we want to remove the bandwidth-suckers. And here’s the problem: unless you have a rooted/ jailbroken phone, you can’t do that for cellular data. Neither Android nor iOS let you manually set a DNS server for mobile internet connections — you have to use the DNS supplied by your mobile carrier.
Nor can you modify the hosts file on these platforms without rooting/ jailbreaking. The hosts file is a custom list of DNS resolutions for your PC. Modifying the hosts file is a common way of filtering ad services, and it’s what products like AdAway ( adaway.org) do.
But there are solutions. On both iOS and Android, there are apps that use the VPN feature of your phone to designate an alternate DNS to the default. In the iTunes App Store, you can try DNS Override, although to designate a custom DNS, you’ll have to pay a few dollars for the app.
On Google Play, you can find a similar app called DNS Changer, which also requires the payment of a few dollars so that you can enter a custom DNS. In both of those apps, you could enter a custom DNS server to create a DNS-based ad filter (you could use the AdGuard server at 176.103.130.130).
On Android, however, we actually prefer Block This! ( block-this.com), a one-stop shop for mobile-wide ad-blocking. Block This! has been removed from the Play Store (because Google is the world’s largest ad service, and it doesn’t like apps that block them), but you can download it directly from the Block This! website by turning on the ‘unknown sources’ setting in Android. Block This! uses the VPN service of Android to trick the operating system into using a custom DNS server, one that blocks ads. You can also use AdGuard’s own mobile app for Android, which functions similarly but uses the AdGuard DNS servers.
On iOS, there are similar apps as well. Our current pick is AdBlock Mobile, available in the App Store. It doesn’t seem to have a 100% success rate when we use it, but it works often enough to be useful.
The other option for both Android and iOS is to use a real VPN service that blocks ads. A number of VPN services offer this feature now: PureVPN, NordVPN, Opera VPN, Private Internet Access, HotSpot Shield, CyberGhost to name a few. Most you’ll have to pay for, however, and you should make sure that ad blocking is actually supported in the mobile app before purchasing.
Whether you go for a DNS solution or a full VPN, however, once you block those mobile app ads you’ll be surprised at how much further your monthly quota will go.
IF YOU’RE USING A MOBILE APP WITH EMBEDDED ADS, THAT APP MIGHT TRY TO REACH OUT TO ADMOB.COM TO DOWNLOAD YOUR NEXT SET OF ADS. BUT INSTEAD OF TELLING YOUR MOBILE THE REAL ADDRESS OF THE AD SERVER, THE DNS SYSTEM WOULD INSTEAD POINT TO AN EMPTY PAGE. THUS IT CAN’T FIND THE AD TO DOWNLOAD.