Frequently asked questions and their answers.

The eBlocker GmbH was a start-up with almost 20 employees, which commercially developed the eBlocker technology and marketed it as a plug & play device. However, after five successful years, the start-up failed in 2019 due to a financing round. The result was a sad insolvency and the discontinuation of business operations.

For the eBlocker Open Source Project we, former employees of eBlocker GmbH, founded a new company: The eBlocker Open Source UG (limited liability). Together we pursue the goal of making the eBlocker technology available to everyone free of charge. We have published the eBlocker software as Open Source to develop it further with the community. To this end, we have legally taken over the technology from the insolvency administrator with the approval of the creditors and the court. The new company will be run “non profit”, i.e. without any focus on profit and with a lot of voluntary work on a part-time basis.

We have put a lot of time, know-how and heart and soul into eBlocker with only one goal in mind: to develop the best technology to protect online privacy. And we believe that we have succeeded.
After the insolvency of our start-up, it was important to us not to let the technology “go under” and to make it available to everyone free of charge. We think eBlocker is important for a self-determined digital society. Therefore this project.

We needed a legal entity for the transparent handling of donations and costs that is easy to administer. We therefore discussed the question of the legal form at length and, out of pragmatism, chose a corporation. We are familiar with the management of corporations and the advantage of a German UG (as the little sister of the German GmbH) are significantly lower foundation costs. Therefore we have chosen this legal form.

The company was founded by a notary, is registered in the Commercial Register and is properly managed in accordance with all regulations and laws. However, we do not have any permanent employees and therefore don’t pay salaries and don’t have office space. We primarily use private resources (computers, telephone, Internet) to keep costs as low as possible. Our “product” is already fully developed and we finance the low operating costs and further developments only through donations.

No, we are not a legal successor of the eBlocker GmbH. We have only taken over the so-called “intellectual property”, but no contractual or other obligations. The insolvency administrator is solely responsible for all questions arising from the contractual relationships of eBlocker GmbH.

eBlocker GmbH is the responsibility of the insolvency administrator and will probably be liquidated soon.

The software on the device, the so-called “eBlockerOS” has been published as Open Source software. The Open Source software includes all features of the commercial product and we also provide SD-images for Raspberry Pi self-installation. Thanks to donations we have licensed all commercial filters used in the originally commercial product.

Yes, we use commercial filters licensed from Malware Patrol, among others. With them, we now offer the same level of protection as with the former commercial eBlocker.

Yes, manual updates are always free and provided daily. Thanks to a donation, you will also automatically receive daily filter and other updates as soon as they are released. With your donation we can cover the operating costs for this.

The blocking list published by the Federal Review Board for Media Harmful to Young Persons (BPjM) is just as much a part of it as extensive categorized domains from free lists. This allows you to restrict the access of your children according to category.

You get all updates of the open source project for free, but you have to trigger the update manually. You can also get daily automatic updates after a small donation. In any case, we recommend switching to the open source license, so that you have all features included.

No, unfortunately not. We only operate the Open Source project for the continuation of the technology and have not taken over any (warranty) contracts of the discontinued eBlocker GmbH. We do not produce any devices and unfortunately cannot help with claims arising from contracts with the eBlocker GmbH. This is the sole responsibility of the insolvency administrator of eBlocker GmbH.

There is a forum where users help each other. Unfortunately we cannot offer individual support with the Open Source project. Furthermore, you can find the technical documentation of the eBlocker GmbH here, which answer all known technical questions.

Pi-Hole is based on DNS blocking for the entire home network and is a great solution if DNS blocking is sufficient and all users in the network are happy with the choice of blockers.
eBlocker also contains a DNS blocker, but it can be controlled individually by each user per device. However, DNS blocking generally has the disadvantage of both under- and over-blocking, so that not all trackers are blocked or not all content can be accessed. Therefore, eBlocker also offers pattern matching on the transported IP packets independently of DNS and thus achieves a top hit rate – especially when trackers are camouflaged. If you want to set up a different VPN or Tor tunnel individually for each of your devices, disguise your iOS as Linux, and be protected while on the road same as at home, then eBlocker is for you.
Here you find a feature comparison Pi-hole vs eBlocker.

Here you can find the eBlockerOS and a detailed instruction to build it yourself.

The project is supported by donations and volunteer work. We are all professionally bound in other jobs and run the project part-time. There are no permanent employees, no office space and only low running costs for server operation and administration (bookkeeping, account management, etc.). We make the running costs transparent and need to cover everything by donations.

Your donation is used exclusively for the project and will not be used for any other purpose. We spend all donations very wisely and carefully.

It is the nature of a donation that it cannot be repaid and, administratively, we have no possibility to do so.

No, not in the German tax authority sense. But we are not profit oriented and run the project essentially on a voluntary basis without much administration. Many conditions are attached to the recognition of tax deductible charity status, which entails a high administration effort. Therefore, we are currently not striving for “tax authority compliant” charitable status, but we are nevertheless non-profit in the true sense of the word.

Every donor receives a license key as a thank you. This unlocks the function for automatic daily updates. Thus, you don’t need to worry about anything and are continuously protected against new threats.

We do not store any financial data on this website, as we do not receive it in the first place: For donations via Paypal, Apple Pay or Credit Card we only get a transaction number without any conclusion about the means of payment. For bank transfers, only the German GLS Bank has your account number stored – and it is safe there as long as the GLS Bank is 😉

Due to the relatively low operating costs, we hope to secure funding through donations from our current users alone. A project on a crowdfunding platform requires a lot of effort and time in creation and support. We currently don’t have this time. If someone from the community would like to get involved, we would of course be very happy. Please get in touch with us: voluntary@eBlocker.org

Open Source projects live from publishing and collaboration in the community. If not enough donations are received to run the eBlocker Open Source project in a long term, the source code remains public and anyone can take over the role of maintainer and continue the project.