Block Ads in Apps on Android

So you're sending ALL your internet traffic through a VPN, that you know nothing about? Sounds like the craziest idea I've ever heard.

Who owns the VPN? What are they doing with your data?

"Using the Android VPN feature" != "Tunneling traffic through a remote network"

Isn't it a local VPN?

...no?

You create a virtual "VPN" that filters out traffic based on hostnames. DNS requests that are not on the blacklist get forwarded to your DNS of choice.

Other adblockers for non-rooted Android (like NetGuard) work in the same way.

I have a pi-hole running on a Digital Ocean Droplet and have a secure vpn to that. Both run out of docker containers, so theoretically they could run anywhere. It works great and only costs me $5/month. No ads anymore either, and I figure DO probably doesn't care too much about my web traffic - though maybe I'm wrong on that.

The only thing that is slightly annoying is that the iPhone seems to drop the VPN from time to time. If only there was a way to work that out....

> The only thing that is slightly annoying is that the iPhone seems to drop the VPN from time to time. If only there was a way to work that out....

I recall NordVPN on iOS used to do that and I took it as a norm. Perhaps a year ago after few iOS and apps, I noticed that not only the time takes for connecting dropped, the drop rate also decreased a lot.

Not directly answer the question, but this made me think that there is a way...

Oh - it's a private VPN? Sorry, that wasn't clear in the article