# Solved: Ad blocking on an Android tablet



## dspguru (May 6, 2011)

Just bought a discounted Lenco TAB-9701 running Android 4.03. It works well enough, but I have two related questions about it (and maybe Android tablets in general). Both relate to content blocking.

1. I installed Opera Mini, because I use Opera on the PC and love its ad-blocking features. I can't seem to find those in the 'mini' version. Are they hidden in some unexpected place, or just not available at all?

2. I installed and activated Adblock, which seems to be running, but which does not seem to do anything, even after I copied all my 'blocked domain' URLs into it. Does not block ads in either Chrome or Opera. Does anyone know how to make this work on a tablet, as opposed to a phone? I have not been able to bring up the second setup screen (as shown on the web page) and of course, being Android, there is nothing resembling a man page or help sheet.


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## prunejuice (Apr 3, 2002)

I don't know about Opera, but there are ad-blockers for other browsers on the Android platform.


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## dspguru (May 6, 2011)

Update: There is a comment on the Google Play page for adBlock, that it "does not work with WiFi only tablets", and then another comment that you have to "point you WiFi at the proxy" for it to work. That sounds reasonable enough - pass the requests through the blocker on port 8080, so it can do its thing on the incoming packets. 

The problem is that I don't know how to do that.


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## dspguru (May 6, 2011)

Further update: The Lanco tablet I had may have been defective. I returned it and got a brand new one, possibly with later software.

In the WiFi setup for that I can now set a proxy, but it asks for both a port number and a proxy name. I can set the port number (8080) but have no idea how to determine or set the proxy name. If I say it is 'localhost', I get an authentication error from the access point.

Any ideas?


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## DoubleHelix (Dec 10, 2004)

A proxy is an actual server that all your traffic will be routed through. You have to find a free one (dangerous) online or pay for one. All this to get around web ads seems a bit excessive. If you do manage to get it setup, every website you visit, and everything you type into those websites (usernames, passwords, etc.) will be routed through a third-party's server that will very likely be of questionable intent. Not a great idea just to avoid looking at some ads.


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## dspguru (May 6, 2011)

You are confusing an external proxy, used to conceal your IP address, with an internal proxy used to filter traffic. The adBlocker proxy only exists inside the tablet itself. It passes all outgoing requests made to port 8080 on to the regular HTTP handler on port 80, but it filters all incoming packets and dumps any which originate from sites on the block list. You know it is internal because the block list is a file on the tablet, not a list somewhere else on the internet.

I would not use an external proxy, for the very reasons you state.


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## dspguru (May 6, 2011)

Update: Got the adBlocker proxy running, and the browser using it, but ran into another problem with authentication at the access point. AdBlocker itself now seems to have been removed from the Android store. 

Instead, I downloaded and installed FireFox for Android, and the adblocker plug-in. Simple, and successful, so far as I can tell. It has an option to allow some "non-intrusive" advertizing, which is an interesting idea. I don't object to adverts in general, only to screaming, in-your-face adverts which take over my browser, launch new tabs, and dump hard-to-delete tracking cookies on me.


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