Essential Guide • 2026
Best Practices
Everything you need to stay safe, block ads, protect your privacy, and get the most out of every site in our library.
Everything you need to stay safe, block ads, protect your privacy, and get the most out of every site in our library.
Do all three and you'll never see a pop-up, your ISP won't know what you're browsing, and every site in our library will work flawlessly.
A VPN encrypts your internet traffic and hides your IP address from your ISP, hackers, and websites.
Without a VPN, your Internet Service Provider (ISP) can see every website you visit. They can throttle your speed, sell your browsing data, and even send you warning letters if you visit streaming or piracy sites.
A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet. Your ISP only sees encrypted gibberish — they can't see what sites you visit, what you stream, or what you download.
For regular free tools like Photopea, TinyWow, Khan Academy, or any legitimate site — you don't need a VPN. These sites are safe and legal. A VPN is for privacy and protection, not for everyday browsing on trusted sites.
Unlimited data, no ads, no logs. Swiss-based privacy. 5 countries on free tier, 1 device. The only free VPN we trust completely.
35,000+ servers in 91 countries. Open-source, no-logs proven in court twice. WireGuard protocol for blazing speed. Our top paid pick.
10GB/month free with browser extension. No email needed to sign up. Built-in ad blocker. Great for casual use.
Ad blockers remove pop-ups, banner ads, video ads, and malicious trackers. They also make pages load faster.
This is the most powerful ad blocking setup available:
Why not Chrome? Google is killing ad blockers on Chrome with Manifest V3. uBlock Origin on Chrome is being replaced with a weaker "Lite" version. Firefox is the only major browser that still supports full ad blocking.
If you don't want to install extensions, just use Brave Browser. It blocks ads and trackers by default with Brave Shields. No setup required. It's Chromium-based, so all your Chrome extensions still work.
Pro tip: Install uBlock Origin on Brave too for double protection on stubborn sites.
Mobile browsers don't support extensions well (except Firefox on Android). The easiest solution:
Your browser is the gateway to everything online. Choose one that respects your privacy.
Chrome is made by Google — the world's largest advertising company. Here's what Chrome does:
Every browser below is a better choice than Chrome for privacy.
Built-in ad blocking, fast, Chromium-based (all Chrome extensions work). Perfect for people switching from Chrome — feels identical but with privacy.
Open-source, fully supports uBlock Origin (Manifest V2), massive extension library. Most customizable privacy browser.
Firefox with all telemetry removed and uBlock Origin pre-installed. Zero configuration needed — privacy out of the box.
Routes all traffic through the Tor network for true anonymity. Slower, but impossible to trace. Use for sensitive browsing.
Free streaming and piracy sites can be sketchy. Follow these rules to stay safe.
Visit Have I Been Pwned to check if your email or phone number has appeared in any data breaches. It's free, safe, and run by a respected security researcher. If your data has been breached, change your passwords immediately and enable two-factor authentication.
YouTube is the worst offender for unskippable ads. Here's how to block them everywhere.
SmartTube is the answer. It's a free, ad-free YouTube client designed specifically for TVs. Features: no ads, SponsorBlock built in, 4K/HDR support, background playback. Sideload it on any Android TV or Fire TV Stick.
Install SponsorBlock on any browser. It's a crowdsourced extension that automatically skips sponsor segments, intros, outros, self-promotion, and "like and subscribe" reminders. Works on YouTube in any browser.
Block ads on EVERY device in your home — TVs, phones, tablets, game consoles — with one setup.
DNS is like the phone book of the internet — it translates website names into IP addresses. DNS-level ad blocking works by refusing to look up ad server addresses. When your device tries to load an ad, the DNS says "that address doesn't exist" and the ad never loads. This works on every device on your network, even ones that don't support ad blocker extensions (smart TVs, game consoles, IoT devices).
The simplest option — just change your router's DNS to an ad-blocking DNS provider:
Set your DNS to 94.140.14.14 and 94.140.15.15. Blocks ads and trackers
network-wide. Takes 2 minutes.
Cloud-based DNS with a dashboard to customize what gets blocked. Free for 300,000 queries/month (enough for most homes).
Pi-hole is a self-hosted DNS server you run on a Raspberry Pi ($35) or any Linux machine. It blocks ads on your entire network with a beautiful dashboard showing stats. It's the gold standard for home network ad blocking, but requires some technical setup.
Most people will visit sites from their phone. Here's how to get the best experience.
dns.adguard-dns.com for system-wide ad
blockingThis blocks ads in ALL apps — not just the browser:
dns.adguard-dns.comiOS doesn't have a simple Private DNS setting, but you can: