The internet just isn’t a friendly place anymore and I’m not talking about the trolls. Invasive and often malicious tracking and advertising is running rampant and sadly we’re a long way from any legal privacy protections so we have to fend for ourselves. one of the biggest offenders that most people aren’t aware of is out Internet Service Provider (ISP). They provide us with DNS (Domain Name Service) to tell our computer where to go every time we type an address, click a link, or any page loads content form any other. Comcast/Xfinity knows better than anyone how often you or any device on your network goes to Facebook, Netflix, amazon, Spotify, or even my site because your computer asks for the numerical address every time you navigate by name. Pi Hole is a personal DNS server you can run yourself on a Raspberry Pi mini-computer for well under $100. Running your own DNS server not only lets you keep your DNS requests private also gives you a network wide blocking ability to prevent every device on your network from reaching out to advertising and other malicious sites. Check out https://www.raspberrypi.com/ for more information on everything Pi including how to buy one and when yours arrives https://raspberrytips.com/install-pi-hole-ad-blocker/ is the best setup article I’ve seen.

If you’re not interested in setting up and running your own DNS server you may still have an option to set your router to use a better DNS provider such as open-dns. It won’t have quite the same benefits but still well worth the one time configuration.