Reduce Your Mobile Data Usage By Blocking Hidden Ads

There have recently been posts about how apps are actually downloading tons of ads in the background.  Every time your device downloads an ad, it is using up your limited data as well as making your device slower.  These apps are basically committing ad fraud.

You can prevent this from happening by blocking the requests for these ads before they get to your device.  All you need is a Raspberry Pi-hole.  It works by redirecting the DNS queries for the advertisements.

Block Background Ads From Slowing Your Device Down

It’s fairly straightforward to install:

1. Install Raspbian onto the Pi
2. Edit the /etc/network/interfaces  file to use a static IP address [critical step]
3. Run sudo raspi-config  to expand the filesystem and give the GPU less memory
4. Connect the Pi to your router with an Ethernet cable
5. Run this command
6. Configure your computers/devices to use the Pi as their DNS server [critical step]

Any Device Can Use The Pi-hole To Block Ads

All you need to do is change the devices DNS server to be the Raspberry Pi.  If you happen to have a VPN, you will also be saving yourself a bunch of bandwidth.