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All-in-One DNS block list

183 points| foray1010 | 5 years ago |github.com

55 comments

order

surround|5 years ago

How to make a block list:

1) Find a bunch of high-quality block lists on the internet which have been painstakingly curated my their maintainers for many years

2) Combine it all into one big list. Tell everyone that you will quickly whitelist any domains if they are causing breakage.

3) Once enough people start using your list, get an advertiser to pay you to silently remove their domains. If anyone notices, just say it was to fix breakage on some obscure site.

I’m not saying that Energized or StevenBlack are doing step 3, but please realize that there are issues with using lists like these. Even if they aren’t getting paid, they might still have some undesirable whitelisted domains. They also deprive the original block list maintainers of views (meaning they might be less inclined to continue maintaining them). You also won’t receive updates from the lists as quickly because of the middle man.

If you are using Pi—hole, OPNsense, or any other tool which can run multiple block lists simultaneously, I recommend taking a look at https://firebog.net for a list of original-source block lists.

stblack|5 years ago

I can see how it might seem that way — I'm Steven Black.

I can point to thousands of combined...

* issues https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%...

* ...pull requests... https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts/pulls?q=is%3Apr+is%3Acl...

* ... and commits https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts/commits/master

...that indicate, it's not so easy.

The sources we use are all vetted. Some sources are remarkable in terms of activity, and responsiveness to problems as they occur.

Overall I think this area is far more dynamic than many realize. Some good people curate the lists we carry.

stblack|5 years ago

This repo has a 3-week track record, by one contributor.

Disclosure: Some of us have been actively curating such amalgamated lists for a long time. https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

jedisct1|5 years ago

It has been around for a while, and is quite popular, especially in the Android community.

On April 23, GitHub disabled the repository. Exact reasons are unknown.

The repository was then deleted and recreated.

tetris11|5 years ago

I have been using your lists for years, and is the first thing I install on all my machines. Thank you so much for your good and tireless work!

moreorless|5 years ago

Thank you for your contribution. I have a few PfSense/OPNSense deployments that leverage your list. Works great!

vsskanth|5 years ago

Thank you! I use your blacklist on all my devices.

ciarannolan|5 years ago

What are the dangers of using a sketchy blocklist?

praveenweb|5 years ago

I have been using NextDNS with a few block lists configured at the router level and device level.

The internet experience has improved a lot since ads and trackers are blocked system wide.

A few block lists that I would recommend:

1. Steven Hosts - https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

2. Adguard DNS - https://github.com/AdguardTeam/AdguardSDNSFilter

3. disconnect.me

The amount of DNS requests made silently in the background is astonishing across all devices.

Etheryte|5 years ago

I'm also using NextDNS and one thing that's a huge boon for me is that the default free tier covers my use case insanely well. Given the statistics for the last 3 months I seem to consistently fly under the free tier limit but if I ever do hit it, it will just default back to a regular DNS. A very user-friendly approach and I hope they keep it as they grow.

A4ET8a8uTh0|5 years ago

<<The amount of DNS requests made silently in the background is astonishing across all devices.

I still remember seeing the log for the first time. It is very radizalizing.

foray1010|5 years ago

Energized Protection actually included them all, so you don't need to add them one by one, and nextdns supports it!

wjnc|5 years ago

Me too! It's blocking a whopping 25%-30% of all requests without a single negative change in my browsing comfort.

bertman|5 years ago

I really appreciate projects like this because I'm sure keeping these lists up-to-date is not an easy task, and many people benefit from the efforts.

That said: maybe it's just me, but I find their website[1] a bit...strange?

It looks like one of those SAAS startup landing pages, you can pick your "pack of block list" ranging from "Tru lite" to "XTreme" etc...

Or maybe it's supposed to be ironic and I just don't get it :) [1] https://energized.pro/

r1ch|5 years ago

Ironically their website doesn't work if you block 3rd party JS due to Cloudflare.

jlgaddis|5 years ago

> Let's make an annoyance free better open internet, altogether!

As a part-time grammar Nazi, there are several things here that annoy the hell outta me!

After reading that, I had to quickly abort and close the tab.

lightswitch05|5 years ago

Looks like my lists are intended to be included, but it was linking to the raw Github source instead of the hosted Github pages version. I went through a major refactor 21 days ago that moved my sources lists around a bit - but preserved the links that are supplied all over the README and the Github hosted pages. So, not only is the project linking to the wrong place, but my list has been broken in it for 21 days now without notice.

Its fine that people love creating these massive all-in-one lists. But I recommend just using the sources directly. That way, if a list gives you trouble, you know who to open a ticket with, or just disable that specific list if its too aggressive for your tastes.

My lists: https://www.github.developerdan.com/hosts/

Wronnay|5 years ago

I am pretty happy with https://www.reddit.com/r/oisd_blocklist/ as a All-in-One Solution ...

chance_state|5 years ago

I use this with my Pi-Hole. Works very well. Along with a few other lists the Pi-Hole blocks about 30% of requests with almost no changes on the user end.

foray1010|5 years ago

Not bad too! But I really prefer opensource solution more, at least we know how it builds. Because in theory the list can be used for DNS hijacking

foobar_|5 years ago

Fundamentally D.N.S is a naming system but each site has a separate naming system via user names.

Something like this should also be applicable for social networks as well. I found this for twitter - https://blocktogether.org/ not sure if it is possible for others like facebook.

dastx|5 years ago

Is there any tools out there that I can use to generate my own aggregated lists from a set of other blocklists?

Ideally it leverages things like GitHub Actions (or another CI tool) + GH Pages/GH releases/Netlify to relief the burden of having to host it myself.

The reason for this is so that I can use NetGuard, which allows for only 1 blocklist. Currently I'm flipping between Blokada and DNS66 because they allow for multiple lists.

bluedino|5 years ago

I've been using blockslists from a couple github repositories for a long time, heck probably since they were found on regular web pages.

They work pretty good, but can be a little cumbersome to turn off or to enable certain domains from time to time (such as when a site has so many ads it breaks the site). But the increases safety and speed while surfing is well worth it.

balboah|5 years ago

This list can be used on Android or iOS by downloading the Blokada app

depressedCorgi|5 years ago

Very cool, I’m gonna try this out with PiHole.

op03|5 years ago

Are there any Firefox, Ubuntu ppl around? Can you guys bake this stuff (host blacklists) into browser, os autoupdates?

Havoc|5 years ago

If you're familiar with *nix stuff I'd suggest just run a pi-hole.

jedisct1|5 years ago

Use DNSCrypt-proxy.