NoTrack Domain Blocking
NoTrack is a DNS-Sinkhole which protects all devices on your home network from visiting Tracking, Advertising, and Malicious websites.
NoTrack provides a DNS Server, Log Collector, and Web Interface to provide you maximum control over what your computers and smart phones can access.
All data stored and processed on your network is for you to do what you want with. No logs are ever sent outside of your network.
This means I have no idea how many people use NoTrack, and I'm happy with it being that way.
Tracking is rife on the Internet, all 100 of the Top 100 websites carry out tracking. In fact three sites in the Top 100 are trackers / advertising [1], that given the choice you wouldn't willingly visit:
CookiePedia shows that on average 17 cookies are dropped to your computer each site you visit, with only the minority (9%) actually being useful for functionality and use of the website. [2]
2: Stats taken from CookiePedia on 28 July 2016
Why should I care, I have nothing to hide
How would you feel if one day you searched for chest pain. Then after being bombarded with adverts for fake medicines, you find your medical insurance is invalidated because you're at risk of having a heart attack and failed to disclose the information to your insurer.[3]
Does it sound too far fetched that tracking companies would sell details to insurance companies? Well the technology already exists for this level of privacy invasion.
3: Similar to example shown at beginning of Terms and Conditions May ApplyFighting back against Tracking
NoTrack is a network-wide tracker blocker. You can install it on a small lightweight Linux computer, e.g. a Raspberry Pi. It sink-holes requests for known tracking domains, and prevents all your systems from being tracked.
Currently the list sits at over 16,000 known tracking domains.
Features
DNS Query Log
DNS Query Log contains a record of all the DNS requests made by systems on your network. You can find out how many sites were blocked for a particular reason, or you can look back through a line-by-line detailed log listing the activity of a particular system.
The DNS Query Log has convenient shortcuts to block/allow a particular site. You can also submit sites you believe to be tracking, so the wider community of users can benefit.
Top Level Domain Blocking
Some domains are cheap/free, and as a result attract a high number of malicious websites. The lifetime of some sites can be as low as a few hours, so its almost impossible to block them through a traditional blocklist. NoTrack provides you the option to completely block access to the worst of these top level domains.
Think of it trying to avoid a bad neighbourhood.
NoTrack Analytics
NoTrack Analytics will monitor your traffic and provide an Alert when any of your devices accessed domains suspected of being related to Tracking or Advertising, when these have not been blocked.
You have the option of submitting suspect domains to NoTrack Blocklist for inclusion, or you can add it to your custom Block / Allow list.
NoTrack Analytics runs on your system locally. None of your data is ever transmitted.
Installing NoTrack
NoTrack is best used on a Raspberry Pi with Ubuntu Server. Compatibility with other Linux distros will be made available in future versions.
Automated Install with Ubuntu / Linux Mint
$wget https://gitlab.com/quidsup/notrack/raw/master/install-ubuntu.sh $bash install-ubuntu.sh
Automated Install with Debian / Raspberry Pi OS
$wget https://gitlab.com/quidsup/notrack/raw/master/install-debian.sh $bash install-debian.sh