If you’re online, you’re being tracked. Every site you visit, every video you watch, every location you go, they’ll be tracking you. They can track you in ways you don’t even realize. That’s why I started down a privacy path. First up, NextDNS.
I’ve been researching ways to stop all the intrusive tracking that sites are doing these days, and I came across NextDNS. It’s easy, cheap, and works very well. NextDNS will block ads and trackers on websites and in apps, protect you from security threats like malware and phishing domains, and help give you control over your online privacy.
In the past 7 days, NextDNS blocked 43,741 items for me and my family. These could be ads, trackers, or other threats.
NextDNS works by sitting between you and the internet. It then blocks some requests from going through. It has a list of known bad actors and stops them before they ever get to your device.
It’s similar to ad blockers in your browser, but they protect your entire device, or network.
The easiest way to enable NextDNS is to add it to your router. Then everything on your network is protected without having to set up each device. The downside to installing it this way is that it’s harder to disable if you need to disable it for any reason.
The next best option is to install the app on your devices. This way, if you want to turn it off, you can easily do that, do your thing, and turn it on again. If you work from home, maybe your work computer has its own protections, so that computer can still be on your network, but not utilize NextDNS. The downside to this approach is you have to install apps on all devices, and some devices (like Roku) don’t allow for DNS configurations.
Neither way is wrong; it just depends on your individual situation. I started with NextDNS on my router, but my work computer needed access to things that NextDNS blocked. I switched to using apps, and everything has been running smoothly.
Overall, I’m not a fan of outright blocking of ads and trackers. I’d rather have the option to block the bad sites and allow the good sites, but bad and good is subjective. I do want to support sites that have a reasonable amount of ads that don’t harm my viewing of their content; however, companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon are taking tracking too far, so I’m out.
You can always try out NextDNS for free and see how it works for you. It’s as easy as installing an app and setting up an account.
