PIA Mace not working?

bloodlustunicornbloodlustunicorn
edited February 2018 in Android VPN Setup
I'm using android 6.0.1 and installed PIA on my pohne and logged in.  I've turned on PIA Mace and disconnected and reconnected to the PIA gateway.  I figured (from the description) that PIA Mace would block ads, however I still see ads everywhere when using chrome. Did I somehow set it up wrong?

Comments

  • Max-PMax-P
    The way MACE works is actually quite limited, so it's entirely possible that some ads do get through despite MACE being enabled.

    MACE operates purely as a DNS blacklist, or, essentially the equivalent of those hosts file blocklists. PIA does not inspect or modify your traffic in any way, so if ads ends up using IP addresses directly or hostnames that are shared with actual content, we just can't block them. MACE works by blocking known ad servers and hope the ad doesn't load up.

    It's a nice to have tool that helps block some of the most known malware distribution domains and malvertising, but it's still extremely weak in comparison to a real client-side ad blocker like uBlock Origin.

    You can test whether MACE has been enabled by visiting google-analytics.com, which is blocked by MACE. If it doesn't load, then it's working, just not with the ads you hoped to get rid of!
  • p5016993p5016993
    So if MACE is turned on and Google analytics stills loads, then what should we do? Thanks.
  • Max-PMax-P
    Hmm, it's possible you already have that address in cache for various reasons. Have you tried in incognito mode?

    The list PIA uses is http://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/, so trying a bunch of the listed domains should confirm whether it works or not.
Sign In or Register to comment.