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I run a pi-hole equivalent on a Raspberry Pi at home (dnsmasq with pi-hole's block lists). One word of warning, its list tends toward over-zealous, blocking sit

I run a pi-hole equivalent on a Raspberry Pi at home (dnsmasq with pi-hole's block lists). One word of warning, its list tends toward over-zealous, blocking sites / links you might want (e.g. Google Shopping links). You can add manual domain exceptions but it's tedious and takes a long time to restart dnsmasq due to the enormous list size and the RPI's relatively slow performance. Blocker extensions are nice becuase you can selectively disable them or open an incognito tab in cases when you need to bypass the list. Easier than temporarily changing your DNS server to 1.1.1.1, etc. Still, nice to have automatic adblocking for all devices in the house.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago
Ideally, one would hope a Pi-Hole would just block Google altogether. ;) Iunno why you'd want Google Shopping links to work. Jokes aside, it'd be nice if there were easier ways to mark certain groups of ads as okay. For instance, if I'm paying for a streaming service at the "comes with ads" tier, I'd actually prefer to allow those ads, without having to figure out which ad domains Hulu is using. The biggest reason to go for the network level block though is convenience across many devices, as you said, as well as blocking tracking and ad domains that aren't running in your web browser: Apps themselves now come with ads that tend to be a lot harder to block on the device.
- sjs382 8y ago
  > Iunno why you'd want Google Shopping links to work. I don't know why you'd want links that you intentionally click to be broken. ;)
  - gumby 8y ago
    The problem is not the links you click, it's the links that load nasty stuff during page load. This is why a rewrite proxy is better than a simple DNS blackholer. Unfortunately a side effect of https ubiquity is that rewrite proxies are much more complex to deploy, even on your own local machines.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - driverdan 8y ago
    I do. I use a hosts blocklist that blocks some inline trackers, like affiliate redirects you find on SlickDeals. I accidentally click those frequently so I want them blocked.
    - sjs382 8y ago
      I may be silly but I want the affiliate links I click on Slickdeals to work.
LeoPanthera 8y ago
I use pfBlockerNG (which is basically just a pi-hole equivalent that integrates with pfSense) and I only use the Steven Black list: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts It seems to be well curated. Breakages are rare, and if there is one, you can file a bug. Works well.
- atomi 8y ago
  This is exactly the information I came in here looking for. Thank you.
gnicholas 8y ago
I had the same problem with overzealous blocking. I had to disable temporarily about once per day, and my wife found it bothersome also (especially because she didn't know how to manually disable it). We turned it off last month and I've just been using Brave instead. Works great on my MBP (fan doesn't run nearly as much as with FF & Chrome), though of course our mobile devices aren't protected anymore. If anyone has a good solution for the overprotectiveness of the Pi-Hole, I'd love to hear it!
- NoPicklez 8y ago
  Isn't the overprotectiveness of Pi-Hole in relation to the blocklists not Pi-Hole itself. I'd suggest findings different blocklists. There is one particular website that is extremely popular, I can't remember what it is now but it has blocklists showing which are likely to cause false positives.
  - Method-X 8y ago
    https://firebog.net/ https://firebog.net/ Only add the ones with a checkmark.
- squarefoot 8y ago
  I have no idea about how Pi Hole internals work being myself happy with Ublock Origin and other browsers extensions, but anyway a database storing the danger level based on IP nature (plain malicious, NSFW, advertising, etc.) and associated risks into multiple fields could make things easier for the user who for example could want to surf gambling or porn sites while keeping the guard high against phishing, advertising etc. A series of switch would be more immediate to use than editing a long list.
- goombastic 8y ago
  You should use the whitelist options.
- DavideNL 8y ago
  You could just disable the pi-hole dns server in your routers DHCP server (so it will not be used by all network devices by default.) Then, only on your own phone/laptop/etc, manually configure your pi-hole as the DNS server for the corresponding home Wifi network. So only the devices you manually configure will use the pi-hole. Also, you can create a shortcut on your phones homescreen to disable pi-hole for x minutes by just a single click (without having to log in.) see: https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/is-there-an-api-command-to-disable-ad-blocking/7693/2 https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/is-there-an-api-command-to-d... Another idea might be to remove all blocklists in pi-hole, and only add this list: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
rietta 8y ago
I run pinhole on a Debian Vm on my FreeNas Mini so the perf is not s problem. Could also run fine on any 2008ish era computer you May have faster than the Raspberry Pi if that’s the concern.

ocdtrekkie 8y ago

Ideally, one would hope a Pi-Hole would just block Google altogether. ;) Iunno why you'd want Google Shopping links to work. Jokes aside, it'd be nice if there were easier ways to mark certain groups of ads as okay. For instance, if I'm paying for a streaming service at the "comes with ads" tier, I'd actually prefer to allow those ads, without having to figure out which ad domains Hulu is using. The biggest reason to go for the network level block though is convenience across many devices, as you said, as well as blocking tracking and ad domains that aren't running in your web browser: Apps themselves now come with ads that tend to be a lot harder to block on the device.

sjs382 8y ago
> Iunno why you'd want Google Shopping links to work. I don't know why you'd want links that you intentionally click to be broken. ;)
- gumby 8y ago
  The problem is not the links you click, it's the links that load nasty stuff during page load. This is why a rewrite proxy is better than a simple DNS blackholer. Unfortunately a side effect of https ubiquity is that rewrite proxies are much more complex to deploy, even on your own local machines.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- driverdan 8y ago
  I do. I use a hosts blocklist that blocks some inline trackers, like affiliate redirects you find on SlickDeals. I accidentally click those frequently so I want them blocked.
  - sjs382 8y ago
    I may be silly but I want the affiliate links I click on Slickdeals to work.

LeoPanthera 8y ago

I use pfBlockerNG (which is basically just a pi-hole equivalent that integrates with pfSense) and I only use the Steven Black list: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts It seems to be well curated. Breakages are rare, and if there is one, you can file a bug. Works well.

atomi 8y ago
This is exactly the information I came in here looking for. Thank you.

gnicholas 8y ago

I had the same problem with overzealous blocking. I had to disable temporarily about once per day, and my wife found it bothersome also (especially because she didn't know how to manually disable it). We turned it off last month and I've just been using Brave instead. Works great on my MBP (fan doesn't run nearly as much as with FF & Chrome), though of course our mobile devices aren't protected anymore. If anyone has a good solution for the overprotectiveness of the Pi-Hole, I'd love to hear it!

NoPicklez 8y ago
Isn't the overprotectiveness of Pi-Hole in relation to the blocklists not Pi-Hole itself. I'd suggest findings different blocklists. There is one particular website that is extremely popular, I can't remember what it is now but it has blocklists showing which are likely to cause false positives.
- Method-X 8y ago
  https://firebog.net/ https://firebog.net/ Only add the ones with a checkmark.
squarefoot 8y ago
I have no idea about how Pi Hole internals work being myself happy with Ublock Origin and other browsers extensions, but anyway a database storing the danger level based on IP nature (plain malicious, NSFW, advertising, etc.) and associated risks into multiple fields could make things easier for the user who for example could want to surf gambling or porn sites while keeping the guard high against phishing, advertising etc. A series of switch would be more immediate to use than editing a long list.
goombastic 8y ago
You should use the whitelist options.
DavideNL 8y ago
You could just disable the pi-hole dns server in your routers DHCP server (so it will not be used by all network devices by default.) Then, only on your own phone/laptop/etc, manually configure your pi-hole as the DNS server for the corresponding home Wifi network. So only the devices you manually configure will use the pi-hole. Also, you can create a shortcut on your phones homescreen to disable pi-hole for x minutes by just a single click (without having to log in.) see: https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/is-there-an-api-command-to-disable-ad-blocking/7693/2 https://discourse.pi-hole.net/t/is-there-an-api-command-to-d... Another idea might be to remove all blocklists in pi-hole, and only add this list: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

rietta 8y ago

I run pinhole on a Debian Vm on my FreeNas Mini so the perf is not s problem. Could also run fine on any 2008ish era computer you May have faster than the Raspberry Pi if that’s the concern.