This is a text-only version of the following page on https://raymii.org:

This is a text-only version of the following page on https://raymii.org:
---
Title : My phone serves me 400+ ads and trackers per hour. Blokada, the best android adblocker, beats 'm all!
Author : Remy van Elst
Date : 16-02-2019
URL : https://raymii.org/s/blog/My_phone_serves_me_400_ads_per_hour_blokada_blocks_beats_them_all.html
Format : Markdown/HTML
---

[![][1]][2]

Recently I switched to a new phone. After a few years (!) my old phone stopped
receiving calls making it time for a new one. The new phone has Android, which
allowed me to install a system wide adblocker, Blokada.

Why do you need an adblocker? Besides not seeing advertisements and being
tracked/spied on in your every move, it improves battery life, makes your device
more secure (no more malicious advertisements), makes pages and apps load
faster, makes your data plan (4g) last longer and most pages are cleaner to view
and read. It's not just me telling you that, the big [antivirus and security
software vendor AVG says the same][3].

Blokada works by posing itself as a local VPN, filtering advertisements,
trackers and all kinds of nasty things that spy on you or bring in malware. It
does not require root access on Android, it's open source and best of all, it
works very well.

To my big surprise after three days of using my phone (after everything was set
up and transferred), Blokada blocked almost 5000 (five-thousand!) advertisements
and tracking requests. That's more than 70 requests an hour, so an ad every
minute (if you would use the device for that 72 hour period). According to the
[Google Wellbeing][4] statistics, in those three days, I used my phone actively
for 12 hours. That means my phone served me more than 400 ads or trackers per
active hour.

![][5]

But those ads/trackers are not just served only when the phone is in use. Just
before I went to bed, I reset the counters, when I woke up it had blocked 400
requests already. That means, even when I'm sleeping and not using my phone, it
is being used to spy on me (tracking) and to serve advertisements.

Blokada is free and open source software and can be found [on blokada.org][6]. I
recommend you install it. With the default adblock list (energized blu) plus the
tracker list, I have not found any sites or applications that did not work, the
user experience is just as it would be without blokada. Battery life is still
the same, maybe even a bit better.

On the desktop (browser) I recommend [uBlock Origin][7].

 Recently I removed all Google Ads from this site due to their invasive tracking, as well as Google Analytics. Please, if you found this content useful, consider a small donation using any of the options below: <a href="https://leafnode.nl">I'm developing an open source monitoring app called Leaf Node Monitoring, for windows, linux & android. Go check it out!</a> <a href="https://github.com/sponsors/RaymiiOrg/">Consider sponsoring me on Github. It means the world to me if you show your appreciation and you'll help pay the server costs.</a> <a href="https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=7435ae6b8212">You can also sponsor me by getting a Digital Ocean VPS. With this referral link you'll get $100 credit for 60 days. </a> 

[1]: https://raymii.org/s/inc/img/blokada1-small.png
[2]: https://raymii.org/s/inc/img/blokada1-big.png
[3]: http://web.archive.org/web/20190216070854/https://www.avg.com/en/signal/5-reasons-you-should-use-an-adblocker
[4]: http://web.archive.org/web/20190216064336/https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/20/18104987/google-digital-wellbeing-pixel-android-9-pie-exit-beta-features-now-available
[5]: https://raymii.org/s/inc/img/welzijn1.png
[6]: https://blokada.org/
[7]: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock
[8]: https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=7435ae6b8212

---

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