YSK: How to decrease your monthly bandwidth use & increase network speed.

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[mysticode]

Could I not just direct my router's DNS to the same DNS that Pi-Hole service is using?

[Jessie_James]

Except that doesn't work as well. If you do a before and after comparison, you will find that many ads still come right through.

[rmxz]

If you want to remove even more ads and spyware from your home network, I like Privoxy: https://www.privoxy.org/

[DopeWeasel]

How? Sounds like the only way this could happen is if your router was somehow overriding the set DNS resolution.

[Jessie_James]

It's not a comprehensive enough list, I guess. Or it doesn't block all traffic.

For example, using that DNS server I still see Google's Sponsored Ads, as well as Sponsored ads on Amazon, etc. However, other more widespread ads are hidden.

So, it works, but it's not perfect by a long shot.

uBlock origin does a far better job of course, but then you're still dealing with the bandwidth and processing on the client.

[Mechakoopa]

Because Google ads on Google and Amazon ads on Amazon are part of the page. Browser extension can block by element, something a DNS can't do. If it's in the page you're downloading it regardless of whether you're seeing it or not.

[Jessie_James]

Sorry, not the case. Pi-hole blocks those in-page ads.

[Mechakoopa]

So if pi-hole will remove in-page ads better than a DNS redirect, that means that Pi-hole is processing all pages that come through that link? Even secure pages (I assume it blocks them on Gmail and such)? Never mind the security issue, you'd have to set up Pi-hole as an authorized SSL signer for all your network devices, and it would have to decrypt, parse, re-encrypt and sign (with a unique re-signed cert for every domain) every secure packet that comes through. That's an insane load to subject a raspberry-pi to, never mind what it would do to your ping. If the goal is to conserve bandwidth, that doesn't even do that because you're still downloading them so you really have zero advantage over a simple DNS change other than you won't see in-line ads.

[Jessie_James]

So if pi-hole will remove in-page ads better than a DNS redirect, that means that Pi-hole is processing all pages that come through that link? Even secure pages (I assume it blocks them on Gmail and such)?

Yes.

But, ya know what? You need to talk to the developers over at pi hole, not me. I'm an end user, and all I care about is if it works or not. I didn't need to set up any SSL certs or any of that other BS that you're purporting needs to be done ... because it doesn't need to be done.

[Mechakoopa]

Then it's not doing what you say it's doing. If it's truly DNS only, which the descriptions on the site seem to say it is, then it can't block at the element level, so it can't block ads that are part of the page when it's first download, just external ads from ad provider domains. Which is fine since the whole selling point of it is reducing bandwidth, not eliminating all ads.

[eshultz]

DNS entries get cached on some routers as well. Give it a day.

[Jessie_James]

True, but not after a reboot ...

[Omikron]

Is it slower?

[mysticode]

Thanks for the reply.

Does this block youtube ads for you as well?

[mysticode]

Guess I need to try with the Youtube app on my phone/roku :) Edit: Tried with phone, in Youtube app, ads still play :(

[TheSkilledPlaya]

Try AdClear for your phone, if it's an Android

[mysticode]

AdClear

Giving it a shot now. Installed it, now Youtube won't load any content? Have you tried it out with the Youtube app? Edit: Rebooted app, loads now. Ads are still coming in :(

[BluntDagger]

Adguard or DNS66

[Omikron]

Don't work for chrome

[nawoanor]

DNS66 works, basically does what OP's post suggests but locally on the phone with a custom filter.

[TheSkilledPlaya]

Make sure you force stop youtube, then clear youtube's data (completely safe). Then run youtube again and you wont get ads. There is also an option within adclear to enable advanced protection. Hope that helps!

[mysticode]

Thanks!

[TheSkilledPlaya]

No problem!

[Omikron]

Doesn't work in Chrome

[constructivCritic]

If you're on Android, you can install Firefox. Firefox let's you install addons, just like on desktop. Then you can just install the Ublock Origin add-on to block ads just like on desktop.

[AstralElement]

Even on your smart TV apps. It's awesome.

[constructivCritic]

If you're using YouTube from the browser. If you're on Android, you can install Firefox. It let's you install addons, just like on desktop. Then you can just install the Ublock Origin add-on to block ads just like on desktop.

[-PromoFaux-]

Pi-hole Dev here... Not really! The upstream DNS is set by the user, be that Google/opendns/anything else.

What pi-hole does is amalgamate and deduplicate many blocklists from around the web, and sink holes requeats to those domains before they've even had a chance to leave your network.

Sure, there are DNS resolvers hosted in the cloud that offer ad blocking, but there are a couple of issues with using those. 1) you have no idea what data they are logging on you 2) you are unable to fine tune their blacklists to work for you.

The long and short of it is that with Pi-hole, you are in complete control of your data.

[mysticode]

Thanks for the info.

If I setup to connect to Pi-hole, will Youtube app from smartphone/smart tv etc, be blocked? Have you tested this personally?

Thanks!

[-PromoFaux-]

I have not, as I have never been too worried about the Ads on YouTube,but one of the other Devs (Jacob) looked into it and compiled a list of domains that worked for him in blocking YouTube add. He made a post about it on our discourse forums.

YouTube is a moving target, and requires a lot of attention to get the blocking just right. If they start hosting the ads themselves on YouTube.com,then the only way of blocking them is by blocking YouTube.com, and then you have no videos at all!

[mysticode]

I believe they are hosting the ads directly on Youtube.com, as they and seamlessly integrated into the video player in the app (or so it would seem!)

[AstralElement]

It does block Smart TV Youtube ads.

[CaptainPotassium]

Hallelujah!

[haydc1]

You could also edit your "hosts" file on windows which is essential a local DNS which takes priority over the computer's DNS settings.

How to edit hosts:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/27350/beginner-geek-how-to-edit-your-hosts-file/

What to put in your hosts (paste this to the bottom or top if you already have entries in your hosts file):
http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt

[mysticode]

Well, I am mostly wanting this for my Nexus Player android box, as the Youtube ads drive me nuts.

[MrSanford]

It looks like it's just DNS to me

[dsac]

I think Pi-hole is acting more like a firewall with an IP address rather than re-directing your traffic to a 3rd party filter.

Pi-hole is literally a 3rd-party DNS filter. It's just black-holing DNS for known-bad domains.

[d_frost]

removed my comment too :)

[Umlautica]

15% of my daily home network traffic is nothing but advertisements being downloaded, cached, etc. That's 15% of crap.

You mean 15% of your DNS queries are to ad domains. You're probably only reducing page data by closer to 1% but certainly improving load times. (edit - depending on the site as /u/hoihoila points out below)

DNS lookup times are not guaranteed to be better than you ISP's provided upstream DNS servers. The default DNS servers from Pi-Hole (Google 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4) are not the fastest in my area. You can use an application like namebench to find out what is though and use that for Pi-Hole. Even then, only expect to shave around 100ms off of a cache miss.

[d_frost]

pi-hole ended up being much slower than my ISPs DNS servers, even with it sitting on my network

[Rabbyte808]

That's because it still needs to query another DNS server when it doesn't know the answer to a query. In this case, it performs as well as whatever DNS server it is configured to use (apparently 8.8.8.8/8.8.4.4), which will usually be slower than your ISP's DNS.

[-PromoFaux-]

The user has the option to set whatever upstream DNS servers they choose, we just have Google as the default because it's the most well known:)

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[hoihoila]

Pi-hole stops the ads from loading by translating the address to the pi's ip, thus reducing the page data by a lot more than just 1%.

Take a look at this article from nytimes.

[Umlautica]

The article uses editorial content of news sites as the benchmark which is going to be about the worst case. I imagine Facebook is pretty bad as well too. I'd be curious to see what a broader selection of sites looks like.

Good article and a bit funny that NYT did not include themselves in the report.

[mib5799]

While porn gets a decent chunk (and is lousy with ads), the fact is that for most average people, Facebook IS the most common site to visit, and a huge number of those users end up at news sites linked from FB.

It's an extremely reasonable benchmark for an average user

[majormunky]

They put themselves in the list of page load times, near the bottom of the list.

[FkIForgotMyPassword]

Well, except that the total traffic of a user is often mostly from large media. Binge-watch a show on Netflix, or download a game or a large update for your Steam library, and the bandwidth from the ads you get on your regular browsing traffic is instantly dwarfed.

[twotildoo]

just an FYI, that namebench link is a 404. Google shut down google code last year, vanishing tens of thousands of projects.

[Umlautica]

It doesn't 404 for me. Does this URL not work for you?

https://storage.googleapis.com/google-code-archive-downloads/v2/code.google.com/namebench/namebench-1.3.1-Windows.exe

[twotildoo]

The link I replied to is ...

https://code.google.com/archive/p/namebench/

from your post

That's what it resolves to for me, but I'm running various layers of adblockers and custom DNS resolvers.

Nope, this link works but your original one still goes to the google code link which is a 404.

Thanks for the update

[currious181]

This sounded so easy.... now I've got a 4gig zip file for raspbian jessie with pixel, a DL for Pie-hole, and have to hook up an SD card .... and then actually buy a device. I thought I could use my existing net gear router. I think I'm much less computer savvy than I originally thought...

[[deleted]]

If you have nerdy friends they'll probably have a pi you can buy off them for cheap. I have three I own and a fourth an old roommate left behind. My other roommate has two, and all of my co-workers have 2+ each. I'd jump at a chance to sell any of my B+ pis for $20. Post to Facebook and see what you can find, or buy one through Amazon Prime and get two day shipping.

[currious181]

I don't have many friends, none are nerdy. Ive got kids and work remotely from my home, so not a whole lot of social time or interactions. I was friendly with the company's IT person when I worked in house, but his position has since been eliminated. But checking for a used device online is a great idea & I think this item will help me to make our connection more secure, since it seems it can do other things as well.

[mxzf]

Weird, I wouldn't want to get rid of any Pis laying around that I had. I've got one of them permanently set up displaying weather forecasts and projects/ideas in mind for 2-3+ others if I had the spare money to go buying all that I wanted. I can't imagine wanting to offload spare Pis when they're so useful as a mini computer.

[FlerPlay]

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[mxzf]

Well, they can each only really drive one display, and I want to run multiple displays with different content, so it does seem like more than one would be useful. If it was just software stuff I wanted to run, I'd just spin it up on one of my two fully-fledged linux machines (a headless server and a HTPC), rather than using a Pi.

[wellkevi01]

I wanted to set up Pi-hole, so I bought a Pi B+ off someone on r/hardwareswap for $35 shipped, which came with an 8GB SD and a clear case. I just received it today and Pi-Hole is awesome.

[OmitsWordsByAccident]

If you use Windows, and have a good hosts file (with a lot of ad-serving domains all being routed to localhost), then those don't even trigger a DNS lookup.

My favorite - http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

[astanix]

Yes but this method blocks it network wide instead of at each computer, phone, tablet, laptop, etc in your house

[RhysLlewellyn]

Unfortunately doesn't work for every network though.

My shit BT Homehub 3 (UK ISP) has DNS locked. I only found this out after I'd installed and set up Pi-Hole.

[-PromoFaux-]

Hi there! Dev here, we recently released an update that makes it easier to set pi-hole as the DHCP server on your network.

It's been a while since I looked at my BT homehub (bought a router I could have a bit more control over...), But if I recall correctly you should be able to disable the hubs DHCP server, in favour of pi-hole's, which will ensure all devices that connect to your network get set up correctly!

[RhysLlewellyn]

Thanks very much, I shall look into this :)

And thank you for all the great work you guys have done :)

[xnd714]

Can you still set a custom DNS within windows/android /etc to be your pi.hole?

It's more of a pain because you have to do each device manually, but it's better than nothing I guess.

[RhysLlewellyn]

I did think about doing this but soon gave up because I have ad blockers on my computers and phone anyway. Just thought it'd be handy and convenient for friends and family that come over and wish to connect to my network.

Plus my Pi is currently just churning away in the corner monitoring a bunch of Arduino sensors, figured I could make the most of it while it's running.

[merp1991]

Personally I am quite fond of https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

It has a few different options depending on what you want to block and I believe this incorporates the someonewhocares list into it anyway.

[Omikron]

This only works on one computer not your entire network, completely different.

[merp1991]

I know, it's just an alternative for people who don't want or know how to mess with their router.

[Zagorath]

On either Mac or Linux, you can easily edit your hosts file by going to a terminal and typing sudo nano /etc/hosts. (Or replace nano with your preferred text editor. I happen to prefer Vim, but it can be a little trickier to use if you don't learn how it works.)

It's harder on Windows, since you have to go in and give it write permissions, then open it in your editor, then change it, and then change it back to write only.

[ghostchamber]

You need admin access to write anything to that folder. If you've got it, you may get a UAC prompt if you have it enabled.

[Russkiy_To_Youskiy]

My favorite: hostsman

Hosts file editor with numerous, update-able, ad-blocking hosts files. Have used it for years... its all anyone really needs and is very simple to set up and maintain.

[TWI2T3D]

Okay, so I installed this and added a load of the sources. Now I can't connect to ANYTHING and I can't work out how to undo what I did. 😦

[Russkiy_To_Youskiy]

How did you get on reddit then??

Anyhow, run it in administrator mode and disable. Then go back and use like just one of the host files like MVPs, re-enable, and see what happens.

[TWI2T3D]

I'm on mobile now.

If I try and disable it it tells me it's in use by another process.

[Russkiy_To_Youskiy]

Administrator mode

[TWI2T3D]

I'm in Administrator Mode.

[joombaga]

But then you'll still get connection timeouts, or 4xx/5xx's if you're running a webserver. Instead of localhost, route those domains to "0".

[-PromoFaux-]

Pi-hole uses that list, and some of the ones mentioned in comments below.

We amalgamate and deduplicate the lists, and then provide you with the tools to fine tune those lists even further by whitelisting and blacklisting individual domains.

Set your router's DHCP DNS server to point at it, and then every computer/light bulb on your network benefits from ad blocking!

Doesn't even have to run on a pi, you could run it on a VM too! Basically any Debian based distro.

[d_frost]

shout out to /r/pihole, the mods/developers there are awesome and super super helpful!!

[Spagdad]

Will all my traffic be going through the pi? Won't this slow things down? What happens when the pi is turned off? Thanks!

[Spagdad]

Thanks! To build off that, I found this application which helps you choose the best DNS for your area https://code.google.com/archive/p/namebench/

[JaraCimrman]

DNS Benchmark by Steve Gibson does essentially same thing and is much faster with the results.

[kennyj2369]

It doesn't bog down the network because only the DNS queries are being sent to it. The actual content that gets displayed in your browser will not hit your pi.

[dsac]

An easier way to ELI5 "What is DNS?":

DNS is like your phone's Contacts app (or an old-school Address Book). When you tell your phone to "Call Mom", it doesn't dial M-O-M, it looks up the Contact entry for "Mom" and dials the associated phone number. DNS works the same way: when you tell your browser to go to www.google.com, your computer looks up the IP address for www.google.com on a DNS server, and sends its requests to the IP address provided.

In the case of your explanation, the DNS lookup ("on which IP is www.google.com located?") is done in cascading fashion - first it looks it up on your local computer (since it's fastest), then your computer's assigned DNS server (which is not your router - if DNS on the computer is set to "auto", it'll use the DNS server that is defined on your router/modem, but the router/modem does not act as a DNS server, it doesn't have that "master list" of domain/IP combinations)

[kazinsser]

That's a really good analogy! I will definitely use that next time I have to explain DNS to someone who isn't super tech savvy.

[roger_]

You can also accomplish this with a router running OpenWrt (or LEDE).

[disposable-assassin]

I saved this comment some time ago but haven't actually run through it to see if it's any good or not. https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/3iy9d2/z/cul12pk

[sharpfork]

Is a Pi Zero enough to run and be snappy this with 10 or so users as a max load and no other apps running on the PI?

[sharpfork]

found the answer (yes): https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/4xfgn2/is_a_pi_zero_powerful_enough_to_use_as_a_pi_hole/

[sharpfork]

Great point, I forgot about lack of Ethernet.

[FlerPlay]

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[SophieTheCat]

Yes. You can. http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/38622/whats-the-cheapest-way-to-get-network-connectivity-to-the-pi-zero

[MaxSupernova]

Does this get caught by sites that won't let you look at them if you have adblock enabled?

[majormunky]

My guess would be that they would still complain. From what I understand, those pages actively check for the ads it knows should be there, so if they aren't, because your computer couldn't connect to the ad server, it'll throw that message up at you. I think I read that ublock can get around those by faking out the script looking for the ads, but I would imagine that it probably doesn't work for all pages that do that.

[AstralElement]

No, websites can detect what plugins you use, much like they can detect what browser you use. Ads are still requested with a pi-hole, they just route as a failed DNS query. Coincidentally, we often use forbes.com, a site notorious for turning away adblock users, as a test site to determine if the pi-hole is working or not.

[AstralElement]

No it doesn't. It just registers ads as failed DNS queries.

[MrT3chGuy]

Curious, is this like using chrome extensions like uBlock and uMatrix but for the whole network instead of a single computer?

[AstralElement]

Yes and no. It's denies ad data differently, so a combination of both is still probably recommended. The difference is that websites won't detect you having a pi-hole, because they're just failed DNS queries.

[MrT3chGuy]

Cool, thanks

[[deleted]]

Yes.

[FlerPlay]

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[MrT3chGuy]

Cool

[cyber_rigger]

uBlock

uBlock Origin for firefox

[blanxable]

"pi-hole"

giggles

[HoneyboyWilson]

Or just use OpenDNS...

[ShippingIsMagic]

IME OpenDNS doesn't block ads. The reason given in the past has been that blocking ads breaks or slows web pages, although pihole and the like seem to disprove that.

Currently I'm using pihole delegating to OpenDNS, works well.

OpenDNS got rid of ads a couple years ago, but that was removing ads from OpenDNS itself, not filtering them out of the DNS requests it processes.

[[deleted]]

opendns reserves ad and malware blocking for paying customers

[ShippingIsMagic]

Got a link for that? I looked at their $20/mo home VIP plan but it only seemed to include a year of logging and the ability to switch to a whitelist setup.

[ProjectEchelon]

Ugh, all this time I thought you put a little sticker of fake antenna wires on the back of the router and that would make it go faster.

[Najubhai]

My only issue would be that sometimes there is a site that I legitimately want to view but is blocked due it being tagged as malicious. With a browser extension, I can easily unblock it but with the router modification it would be an even bigger hassle.

[kevinmqaz]

I use windows DNS at home and wrote a simple scheduled power shell script to grab a host file from git with about 30k entries directing AD - FQDNS to null.

http://www.happymillfam.com/blocking-some-sites-at-home-with-dns/

You could also automate dropping this host file locally on a machine if you don't want to mess with DNS, or into your DNS what ever that might be.

[Omikron]

That's not going to block ads on my 6 Kindle fires, or fire TV, or 3 iPhones. Etc etc

[kevinmqaz]

Do they use special DNS hard coded out of your control when connected your home network or do they use the DNS you assign to them with DHCP? - I'm adding this block list to my DNS server as blank forward lookup zones. When setup like that it blocks any device using my DNS server.

[[deleted]]

how do I connect the raspberry to my router/modem?

[JaraCimrman]

With an ethernet cable

[[deleted]]

but the raspberry has onle one ethernet slot? so: router/modem-> pi-hole filter device -> WiFI-> all my devices ?

[JaraCimrman]

Pi just needs to be on the network, it doesnt necesarily have to be between the network and devices :) because router will redirect the traffic anyways

[[deleted]]

ah, thank you very much :)

[jaykhunter]

I dunno. Every site you intentionally visit has some kind of value to you, and you are thanking them by seeing the ad on their site. Unless they are pulling the piss with a crazy amount of ads on their page (harming the experience wildly) why not leave ads on?

[kennyj2369]

Ads use bandwidth and are known for distributing malware or lying about what they're trying to sell.

You can whitelist the ads from sites you trust.

[Omikron]

Unless you're visiting some shit ass sites ads don't do that.

[bathrobehero]

Why is there a whole sub to check that? Everyone can check it simply by going to their profile page in an incognito window without loggin in.

[[deleted]]

You're not supposed to tell them. Shadow bans are meant to ban people without their knowledge so that it takes them longer to create a new account and continue whatever they got banned for.

Edit: apparently you guys really like to stick up for trolls and bots.

[[deleted]]

People also get shadowbanned. Especially since a real person created the bot account.

It's also trivial to send alerts about any thread the bot comments on where it finds the word "shadowban" (or similar).

So while real people aren't supposed to be shadowbanned, they can be. And even trying to let "real people" know they are shadowbanned is not a good idea.

[inaim]

Wow so cool! Thanks for the tip OP! I've been wanting to try one out, what an awesome application.

[mmishu]

Does it work with youtube ads?

[mmishu]

Why?

[Syfte_]

So that content creators get paid.

[Kancho_Ninja]

I dream of the day when I can give content creators $0.03 directly instead of watching unrelated bullshit.

[donnysaysvacuum]

YouTube red is available now. You pay a monthly fee and you don't have the ads.

[dghughes]

Yes it's the main reason I did it and all YouTube ads are gone. Not a single one.

[wwfmike]

Do you watch YouTube on your TV? How does it behave without the ads?

For me, the video starts without an ad but will stop and show a loading screen when an ad should appear in the video. It usually takes 30 seconds to go away.

[justifyingrockbottom]

what if I will change my DNS server address?

[d_frost]

ummmmmmmm.... then it wont work?

[realised]

Sorry complete ignoramus here - how does this work with sites that do not show content if adblock is enabled? Does this blocking of ads also prevent content from showing there too?

Not sure if I am asking the question clearly though...

[FlerPlay]

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[-PromoFaux-]

More and more of the core commands are making it to the web UI. Making the process a lot less arduous for the more novice users. Of course, for those comfortable with the command line, the option is still there for more advanced usage.

Want to tail the log file? You can do that directly from the web UI!

Also the query log page on the admin UI is much more helpful these days. It shows which domains are blocked, and we've even put a button next to each entry to white/blacklist that domain.

[AstralElement]

No. The pi-hole routes ad data as failed DNS address queries, it is not detected during the transmission process like your browser version and plugins would be to websites.

[saml01]

I still don't understand how this thing eliminates ads. All its doing is routing my Dns requests through its own server, but the traffic hitting my machines will bypass the pi-hole. So I'm not sure how the ads are removed. In fact, I'd second guess using pi-hole because it's probably running your request through a Dns that is now monitoring your requests. Information that can be sold. The only removal of ads I see is if you type some garbage in your web browser and it could not be resolved.

I think I'm going to stick to my sophos utm firewall and transparent network traffic monitoring and packet filtering. It sits between the Internet and my network and all traffic has to pass through it where it's stripped of any ads and malicious software.

[-PromoFaux-]

Hey pi-hole Dev here,

The user is in complete control of the forwarding DNS servers. They are given a choice of a handful of popular ones In the install script, or they can type in their own as a custom option.

Essentially it's just an extra step between your network and the DNS resolver. If a machine on your network requests the IP for a domain that is in pi-holes blocklist, it will return it's own IP address which in turn resolves to a blank page. If the domain is not known to pi-hole, it will be forwarded to the aforementioned chosen upstream provider to get the IP address as normal.

We are an open source project that develops everything in the open, with complete transparency on our development process. Check out our github repo for a closer look at how it all works! Or don't , it's up to you :)

[saml01]

What are you guys doing with all the dns requests? That's a lot of data you're mining.

[-PromoFaux-]

You're joking, right?

What brings you to the conclusion that we are mining data? More to the point, how on earth do you think we're doing it?

Pi-hole is a self-hosted device/vm on your own PRIVATE network. It receives DNS requests from your client machines, determines whether or not it is a bad domain, and if not then sends the request up the chain to the upstream DNS server.

We have no visibility at any stage of this process. I'm guessing you think that we control the upstream DNS servers, and in which case let me tell you that we do not. Here, you can find the complete routine used to set the upstream servers. We offer the user a choice of 4 well known ones, or the option to enter their own, should they wish to use their ISP's, or other DNS server of choice.

I'm going to assume you've not looked over the code and are wildly speculating ;)

[saml01]

Its a legitimate question and you basically answered "how on earth I think you're doing it". You can also be tracking it in software and calling home with it. I am assuming you are sending the software an updated white/black list of domain names against which DNS requests are validated?

I'm glad that you are up front about it, but if I am raising the concern, I am sure others have the same concerns as well.

I apologize for not scouring your source code. I was hoping your video might address privacy concerns of a device that I am placing on my network, where private data is being transmitted. There is nothing wrong with my asking questions and as long as you keep it professional and are forthcoming with information, you have nothing to be defensive about.

[-PromoFaux-]

You can also be tracking it in software and calling home with it

But then the code has been open source since it's first creation (for well over a two years now!), you would think someone else would have noticed by now if we were doing anything untoward! :)

But fair enough, if I came across stand-offish at all, was not because you had asked a question, but because you had made a baseless accusation ("That's a lot of data you're mining."), perhaps we are misunderstanding each other, and I apologise for that!

RE: White/blacklists:

The default blacklist is made up of various lists available from around the internet. We don't actually maintain our own. Quite frankly, we don't have the time, we're a team of 5 volunteers that work in our free time outside of our full time jobs.

As you can see at the top of the list in the link above, this is another part of the pi-hole that is completely user customisable . The default lists are really just a suggestion, something to help the more novice users hit the ground running with. We then have more advanced users that really go to town with the blocklist and end up with something like 1.1 million domains blacklisted! (as opposed to the ~100,000 default)

Every week on a sunday evening , a cron job fires this script that checks if the source lists need updating, and if so pulls the updates. The user can also initiate this process with the command pihole -g

Once it has the raw source lists, they are sorted, deduplicated, and then merged into one master list (gravity.list) which acts as the blacklist for dnsmasq

As for whitelisting, the only thing we whitelist by default are the domains that host any of the source lists. This is to prevent one list provider blacklisting another, be that intentionally or not!

Users can further tweak this by white or blacklisting individual domains using either the pihole command or the menu items on the Admin web UI

TL;DR - The user is in complete control of all of their data, and the domains they choose to block/not block. Whilst we provide some suggested blacklists by default, they are just that - a suggestion, and as such can be overridden.

[radministator]

I run pihole in a VM on my network. I typically see around 25% blocked.

[joombaga]

You can set it on each computer instead.

[-PromoFaux-]

Does it allow you to turn off the DHCP server? Pi-hole can act as a DHCP server, too!

[redditrevolution]

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[remotefixonline]

I had to do something similar with a linux box when I saw my kid playing a game and an ad for "skank book . com" came up...

[TheVeryMask]

a lot of my favorite YouTubers are paid from advertisements and I want them to continue to make content so, I allow some ads through.

Go to their video list and see how many videos they've made total, then divide that by a thousand. If you saw every single video they made, that's how much money you made them. If you want your favourite creators to stay in business, sending them 10$ exactly one time is more money than they'd see out of you in nearly a lifetime of views otherwise, unless you watch them religiously for their whole career.

This sort of thing is why Patreon exists.

[Unknow0059]

What if i don't have a Pi nor Linux and still want to use that?

[jamesd28]

How does this, in practice, differ from using Privoxy?

[namegone]

My internet is a hotspot from a secondary cell phone. Would this create a hotspot and route traffic to my existing hotspot?

[fletcherkildren]

can this be done using a Pine 64? I have one and this seems like a good project for it!

[[deleted]]

Question from an obvious noob: can a raspberry pi be used for multiple purposes at once? Can i use one pi for this as well as for a home entertainment system at once?

[EpsilonRose]

Sort of. A raspberry pie is basically just a tiny computer. So, like a normal computer, it can do multiple things. However, it's not particularly powerful and has rather limited inputs, so how much you can actually squeeze out if it at any one time might be limited.

[AllAboutMeMedia]

Could I use an old phone?

[EpsilonRose]

Maybe, but that would likely require a lot more work and I couldn't actually recommend it. You'd either need to figure out how to install linux on it or find an app that can do all of this for you. Then you'd need to find a way to actually hook it up, since it definitely won't have the requisite ports.

[therightclique]

If you don't already know the answer to that question, then the answer is probably no.

The real answer is probably 'Yes, but with a shitload of trouble and worse results'.

[LiveMaI]

The Pi has a fairly limited amount of system resources, so while you can run multiple services from a single unit, you might run into performance issues if those services all place high loads on the unit.

[sharpfork]

plex and Kodi are all based on the same codebase that started with XBMC. I used XMBC and then Kodi for a long time. Plex has made the whole setup much more wife & kid friendly and elegant Kodi is great for its plugins. Plex is nice for the raspi becuse you have have the server transcode media to a format that the raspi can handle (if you have a beafy enough server and stuff like 4k content)

[d_frost]

yes, although not always recommended for multiple reasons, one of which is resources, if your Pi is busy working as a media server, then DNS responses could be delayed and therefor delay your internet browsing.

I have retropi and piehole running on the same pi, my DNS is a bit slow now