Rethink DNS + Firewall is the easiest way to monitor app activity, bypass internet censorship, block ads and trackers on your Android device. A firewall can block any application that connects to the Internet via Wi-Fi or mobile data. Since most forms of monitoring require data to be sent over the network to a server, their firewall effectively mitigates this threat (file managers, alarm clock, calculator are some examples of applications that do not require no internet access to work). Your smartphone’s network traffic is tunneled through our app (using a virtual private network). Any outgoing connection from blocked applications is stopped in its tracks.
Messaging apps, for example, cannot be fully protected by a firewall, but instead can be blocked from accessing certain server endpoints of known ad networks and trackers. This is how popular browser-based content blockers like uBlockOrigin work (in addition to doing a host of other things). Specifically, this is done by protecting traffic at the DNS layer: sending empty responses when asked to resolve blocked domain names. For example, the domain name of a well-known tracker, say follow.you.everywhere.com, is never resolved by rethinks; which effectively allows the rest of the application traffic to pass through, but to this particular domain.
