If you want to start 2022 right re your mental well-being, you can do worse than setting up NextDNS for your network. It’s is a system-wide set-and-forget tracking/ad blocker, either for your home network and/or just a laptop and/or your phone. The net becomes so much saner with it. They have a generous free plan which should be more than enough for most people.
Go here to check it out: NextDNS.io (Disclaimer: that’s an affiliate link, yes, but I’m a long-time, happy, paying customer of theirs and I wouldn’t recommend it if it wasn’t as stellar as it is. If you don’t care about that affiliate stuff, visit https://nextdns.io/ instead.)
I’ve started using it on just my laptop over a year ago just to give it a spin; about two weeks later I graduated to a paid plan (less than €2/month, cheap!!) because it’s just so useful. The results:
- less bandwidth use
- almost no tracking in websites or apps
- reclaimed sanity since I don’t see many ads anymore
- a much better web browsing experience without the need for browser addons
I’ve set it up for my whole home network, using my router, and I’ve configured it to my liking. For example, in my house Facebook does not exist anymore. Your preferred setup might look different, but it’s easy to adjust, really.
If you have questions, please let me know, and I’ll do my best to answer them.
Happy new year, folks. Fly safe. :)
