A review of Pi-Hole ad blocker after using for a week

Pi-Hole is a DNS sink server which blocks ads and malware based on the DNS resolution. It is light on resources and can be installed in Raspberry Pi. By default; it installs Lighttpd. If you use Nginx, you need to change settings as both servers can’t run on the same port.

It allows to select a DNS upstream from a bunch of DNS servers. The DNS queries are cached and served from the cache next time.

Here is the interface of Pi-Hole

The red tile on the right side shows a number of block sites.

Blocking websites

Luckily, there are people at blocklist.site and firebog who constantly update the hosts lists. Also, the forumfor Pi-Hole has great resources and discussion about hosts lists. For blocking sites, You need to enter the URL of the hosts file in the Settings>BlockLists

	https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts	

	https://mirror1.malwaredomains.com/files/justdomains	

	http://sysctl.org/cameleon/hosts	

	https://zeustracker.abuse.ch/blocklist.php?download=domainblocklist	

	https://s3.amazonaws.com/lists.disconnect.me/simple_tracking.txt	

	https://s3.amazonaws.com/lists.disconnect.me/simple_ad.txt	

	https://hosts-file.net/ad_servers.txt	

	https://blocklist.site/app/dl/fakenews	

	https://blocklist.site/app/dl/porn	

	https://blocklist.site/app/dl/proxy	

	https://raw.githubusercontent.com/crazy-max/WindowsSpyBlocker/master/data/hosts/spy.txt	

	https://hosts-file.net/grm.txt	

	https://reddestdream.github.io/Projects/MinimalHosts/etc/MinimalHostsBlocker/minimalhosts	

	https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/data/KADhosts/hosts	

	https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/data/add.Spam/hosts	

	https://v.firebog.net/hosts/static/w3kbl.txt	

	https://adaway.org/hosts.txt	

	https://v.firebog.net/hosts/AdguardDNS.txt	

	https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anudeepND/blacklist/master/adservers.txt	

	https://v.firebog.net/hosts/Easylist.txt	

	https://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=hosts;showintro=0	

	https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/data/UncheckyAds/hosts	

	https://www.squidblacklist.org/downloads/dg-ads.acl	

	https://v.firebog.net/hosts/Easyprivacy.txt	

	https://v.firebog.net/hosts/Prigent-Ads.txt	

	https://gitlab.com/quidsup/notrack-blocklists/raw/master/notrack-blocklist.txt	

	https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/data/add.2o7Net/hosts	

	https://s3.amazonaws.com/lists.disconnect.me/simple_malvertising.txt	

	https://hosts-file.net/exp.txt	

	https://hosts-file.net/emd.txt	

	https://hosts-file.net/psh.txt	

	https://mirror.cedia.org.ec/malwaredomains/immortal_domains.txt	

	https://www.malwaredomainlist.com/hostslist/hosts.txt	

	https://bitbucket.org/ethanr/dns-blacklists/raw/8575c9f96e5b4a1308f2f12394abd86d0927a4a0/bad_lists/Mandiant_APT1_Report_Appendix_D.txt	

	https://v.firebog.net/hosts/Prigent-Malware.txt	

	https://v.firebog.net/hosts/Prigent-Phishing.txt	

	https://gitlab.com/quidsup/notrack-blocklists/raw/master/notrack-malware.txt	

	https://ransomwaretracker.abuse.ch/downloads/RW_DOMBL.txt	

	https://ransomwaretracker.abuse.ch/downloads/CW_C2_DOMBL.txt	

	https://ransomwaretracker.abuse.ch/downloads/LY_C2_DOMBL.txt	

	https://ransomwaretracker.abuse.ch/downloads/TC_C2_DOMBL.txt	

	https://ransomwaretracker.abuse.ch/downloads/TL_C2_DOMBL.txt	

	https://v.firebog.net/hosts/Shalla-mal.txt	

	https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/data/add.Risk/hosts	

	https://www.squidblacklist.org/downloads/dg-malicious.acl	

	https://zerodot1.gitlab.io/CoinBlockerLists/hosts

You can also build your custom block list and paste the URL in the same settings.

Performance

The total blocked domain are 2,442,082.

It slowed Raspberry Pi 3B+ a bit. The Raspberry Pi 3B+ is also serving a private wiki which takes time to serve pages.

Needs UBlock for a perfect Solution

Pi-Hole a DNS based blocker so websites serving ads from the same host are not blocked. Honestly, I use it to be safe from malware, fake news, and ransom ware websites. It serves its purpose well.

Rest, UBlock completes the need for a per site filter and blocker.

Result

well, I was not astonished to see Microsoft on the top of blocked list. It sent the highest number of requests.

Snapdeal's android app went on a connection request spree as it could not connect its home server. It sent 4089 requests within a couple of hours.

Overall, Pi-Hole is actively developed and is stable to use.

Photo: Photo by Darren Chan on Unsplash