'Lockdown' Firewall App That Lets You Block Ads and Trackers in All Apps Expands to Mac

[Beelzbub]

I think this app is pretty cool. However the problem I have with this app is it defaults your VPN connection to Lockdown (iOS), and it doesn't matter if you use their VPN or not. I have multiple VPN profiles, work, home and a company I do consulting for. And if you have Lockdown running (which seems to do a great job at blocking things) and you change the VPN profile to something else, so I can login to my office, it turns the firewall off. And when you go to turn the firewall back on, it then changes the default VPN profile back to Lockdown. I have experienced this on both my iPad and iPhone. I use the VPN a lot on those devices, I VPN into my office daily and use Remote Desktop and or login to a switch or router to configure access for something. So as much as I like this app, I think I will need to remove it. If you do not have any VPN profiles, then this is no big deal for the average user. For people like me, this could become a problem. I do however love the Duet app. I use that once and a while when traveling and I need a second display for my laptop.

 

[tangfish]

I think this app is pretty cool. However the problem I have with this app is it defaults your VPN connection to Lockdown (iOS), and it doesn't matter if you use their VPN or not. I have multiple VPN profiles, work, home and a company I do consulting for. And if you have Lockdown running (which seems to do a great job at blocking things) and you change the VPN profile to something else, so I can login to my office, it turns the firewall off. And when you go to turn the firewall back on, it then changes the default VPN profile back to Lockdown. I have experienced this on both my iPad and iPhone. I use the VPN a lot on those devices, I VPN into my office daily and use Remote Desktop and or login to a switch or router to configure access for something. So as much as I like this app, I think I will need to remove it. If you do not have any VPN profiles, then this is no big deal for the average user. For people like me, this could become a problem. I do however love the Duet app. I use that once and a while when traveling and I need a second display for my laptop.

Another VPN can work if you’re using UDP & lockdown. TCP it’s one or the other.

 

[Airforcekid]

The trouble with pi-hole (or any other kind of traffic filtering device on your network) is it only works when you're *on your network*.

Especially for phones that looks kinda useless to me.

How does this Lockdown thing work on iOS? It forces all your traffic through a VPN, so it has to go through *their* servers?

You have two options if your not on your home network you can use pivpn alongside pihole and be on your home network anywhere. You can also download the nextdns.io app to your phone that will provide DNS over https and blocking no matter what network you are on.

 

[DoctorApple]

It’s not so much the complexity of doing it that’s put me off but rather it’ll likely degrade my mobile speeds which are often on par and can exceed my homes connection. I’m based in Australia where most residential plans top out at 100mbit down and 40mbit up. I’m fortunate enough to have that, many don’t, but if I use a VPN to access my homes PiHole instance then my residential 40mbit upload will become the max my mobile will achieve if all traffic, not just DNS, is going via the VPN. At least that’s my understanding. Given my mobile plan can out perform my home I don’t really want everything going via a VPN for that reason.

Could possibly look at other options for accessing PiHole. Right now I’m playing with either using AdGuard Pro with a number of on device filter rules or NextDNS + DNSCloak which was suggested here with server managed rules. It’s not as good but it’s probably a good enough compromise for me.

I’m an app-holic.

 

[nicho]

I’m an app-holic.

Well, you're on the right platform if you want to seek anonymous help.

 

[dallastigers]

My question is more about iOS version that Mac app is ported from.

Using app's VPN for device wide DNS blocking/filtering If I am seeing ads or trackers blocked on lockdown's log should I also being seeing the browser I am using like Firefox listing some of the same ad or tracker domains the browser is saying it blocked at same time?
Browser usually only has 2 or 3 duplicates listed by lockdown for each website, so it's not even close to be all Lockdown lists but can be some of the big ones.

 

[ArmCortexA8]

Garbage software and not really need when using ABP on Chrome / Mac OS Mojave / and in fact after a few hours I realised it was not doing anything (view log and Block list) were all (0) even after enabling them and using Google dns settings. So I removed it from my system. Just like all the VPN's are garbage this did nothing but took hardware space. I also used littlesnitch but removed it because I was sick to death of constant nag screens to allow - drove me bonkers.

 

[SBlue1]

This app is definitly not needed if you have Little Snitch. This morning I just created my own Little Snitch rule blocking the 555 domains that Locknote is blocking (you can find the list on their github). But if you are looking for very good list for Little Snitch (with much much more domains blocked than Locknote), take a look at

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/naveednajam/Little-Snitch---Rule-Groups/master/unified_hosts_base/sb_unified_hosts_base.lsrules

or

https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=littlesnitch-rule-group-subscriptions&mimetype=plaintext

Thank you sir! This is pure gold!