PRIVACY: Inside the Brotherhood of the Ad Blockers.

Anyone who works in the $200 billion digital advertising industry should be scared of people like Mark Drobnak, because the ad blocker he uses is way more powerful than yours. The college freshman says it feels as though everyone at Rochester Institute of Technology, from his roommate to his professors, has installed some way to ward off online ads. Drobnak is one of the die-hards who goes further, working with a handful of comrades to build what they call “a black hole for advertisements.” His parents say the one he built them works great.

Pi-hole (as in “shut your …”) is a free, open source software package designed to run on a Raspberry Pi, a basic computer that’s popular with DIYers, fits in the palm of your hand, and retails for about $35. Most ad blockers have to be installed on individual devices and work only in web browsers, but Pi-hole blocks ads across an entire network, including in most apps.

Interesting. I get similar results taming the most obnoxious sites using a customizable JavaScript blocker, but it can be tedious to set up and the results aren’t always easy to predict. I’ve thought about picking up a cheap PC and setting it up as a Ubuntu-based web server with ad and tracking firewalls installed, but the effort-to-reward ratio still breaks on my lazy side.

But Pi-Hole installed on a $35 Raspberry Pi is awfully tempting.