Ads not being blocked

[ADZ]

Debug Token: h95e29ay21

Hi All, this is new to me so hopefully an easy fix for someone who knows how this all works.
I have pi hole set up and my asus router DNS is set up to go through the pi hole. I know this is working as if I turn the pi hole off we lose internet connection.
The gui works well and says 10% of traffic blocked. But every site I go to still has pop up adds and does not seem to have made any difference.

Any help advice would be appreciated.

[jinxfx]

It's working, you either need to add to the default blocklist good list to use and select only the ticked items. Also using uBlock Origin in your web browser well help out a lot.

[jfb]

@ADZ

h95e29ay21

We didn't get an upload - please upload a new log and post the new token

[jfb]

@jinxfx

It's working

This is not known. It may work for some clients only, for example.

[ADZ]

Hi jinxfix & jfb,
I am just updating the list now and will generate a new token.

[ADZ]

New token: e1qvpkbj9s

[jfb]

A few thoughts.

(1) You don't need 71 blocklists and 3.9 million domains on blocklist to block ads. Lack of blocklists is not the reason you were seeing ads.

Note that this entry appears to have combined two URL's into one line (problem):

https://v.firebog.net/hosts/Easylist.txthttps://pgl.yoyo.org/adservers/serverlist.php?hostformat=hos

Why were/are you seeing ads? Your Pi-hole is working properly per your debug log, so it's one of these reasons.

(1) Client(s) are not using Pi-hole for DNS. Do you have any other DNS resolvers available to clients, other than Pi-hole? Any "secondary" DNS servers in the router?

From a client that you believe should be connected to the Pi-Hole for DNS, from the command prompt or terminal on that client (and not via ssh or Putty to the Pi), what is the output of

nslookup pi.hole

Why should Pi-hole be my only DNS server?

Reduced Ad Blocking Capability The main reason you should Pi-hole as your only DNS server is that you will see increased performance in the blocking of ads. If you have two DNS servers (Pi-hole and something else), your network clients may not always query Pi-hole for name resolution. If a query happens to be answered from a non-Pi-hole DNS server, your block lists will not apply (since that DNS server doesn't know about them). All Queries Need To Go Through Pi-hole First Since other DNS se…

(2) Even if the client is using Pi-hole for DNS, if you are using a browser with private or secure DNS settings, DNS traffic will go somewhere other than Pi-hole.

(3) If you are using a VPN service on a client, DNS traffic will bypass Pi-hole.

(4) Some ads cannot be blocked by Pi-hole. YouTube, Facebook are two examples.

How do I determine what domain an ad is coming from?

Block ads or fix broken sites This FAQ is written in the context of finding out how to block an ad that isn't blocked automatically, but the same steps can be used to troubleshoot issues with sites that don't function properly. An example is that sometimes certain payment gateways try to collect metrics on the sale, but these domains are blocked by Pi-hole, so the payment cannot be processed. Also, some links send you through several referrers and if one of them is blocked, you may land on a …

[ADZ]

Thank you for looking at this.

I think you right about the 71 lists... I was not updating the gravity so they were not working.
After updating it I went from 20,000 domains to 3,870,000!!! A bit excessive. I then went and did a few tests and its working now.
Will now purge some of these lists as its likely to cause a few false positives.

Thanks again

[jfb]

@ADZ

I then went and did a few tests and its working now.

For future readers of this thread, what did you find to be the problem?

[ADZ]

Hummm.....
School boy error.
Not reading instructions properly....

Very impressed with it now. Very easy to set up and working well.

But the real issue was not updating gravity after adding lists.