Ad Blocking¶
Pi-hole is a powerful network-wide ads & trackers blocking DNS server. Once it's set up, it'll cover all home devices, so there's no need to install any client-side software for that.
Why Pi-hole? The have well supported docker image and they also have very broad community. Every aspect is well documented, so it's much easier to fix stuff when something goes wrong.
Note
Pi-hole blocks requests. This means it can break some websites sometimes.
Warning
On Ubuntu, there's an issue with systemd-resolved consuming port 53, which is required for AdGuard.
I've made a script smart-home fix-systemd-resolved that automatically fixes that issue.
Ad Blocking List¶
Here are ad-blocking lists I use:
- Every green list on firebog.net
- Malware Domain List
https://www.malwaredomainlist.com/hostslist/hosts.txt - NoTracking List
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/notracking/hosts-blocklists/master/adblock/adblock.txt - YouTube Ads DNS
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kboghdady/youTube_ads_4_pi-hole/master/youtubelist.txt - Mobile Ads Filter
https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/chromium/filters/11.txt - Annoyances Filter
https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/chromium/filters/14.txt - Russian Ad Filter
https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/chromium/filters/1.txt - Safari Filter
https://filters.adtidy.org/extension/chromium/filters/11.txt
Prior ard¶
Caution
Previously, I used AdGuard Home to blocks advertisements.
AdGuard is a Russian company, and this opens security concerns. Though it's legally registered in Cyprus, most of its developers work from Russian offices.
After Russian invasion in Ukraine I decied to move away from AdGuard.
I was using AdGuard Home as my primary ad-blocking solution. AdGuard is a DNS-based ad-blocking tool that checks and blocks requests to advertisement domains.
There is a Docker container for AdGuard Home.
However, make sure your Internet provider allows custom DNS. My provider was blocking this, and I spend a lot of time trying to figure out what's wrong.