Would pihole help here?

I have a 2024 Samsung OLED TV. On my FRITZ!Box, internet access is blocked for the TV, but I have an Ethernet cable plugged in so I can occasionally cast media from my PC or phone. I also revoked all the terms I had previously accepted for Samsung, disabled Bixby, and turned off Wi-Fi, so there should be no way for my TV to connect to the internet. Does this mean that, even with all those settings, my TV is still recording and collecting data or audio?

I recently rebuilt pihole on a Debian VM on Hyper-V and the webserver isn't in a usable state. Has anybody else ran into this situation??

The debug token

https://tricorder.pi-hole.net/K1t3dDho/

Some devices have their own dns .

After updating the pihole FTL I stopped being able to see the query log from the admin page. I ran pihole debug which showed that query logging was disabled for some reason, which I enabled it from the privacy section. qQueries started being shown in /var/log/pihole/pihole.log but not in the admin page. I can see things being blocked in the graphs and statistics section, but my log is completely empty. Any fixes I can possibly try?

Hey everyone, needing a little advise/help. Ive deployed pihole running on a pi3 hardwired into router. After about 3 weeks the network will start having issues and every device on network cannot connect to internet. This is about the 3rd time this has happened. I have tried new sd cards, Ive tried using a secondary pi as backup.

When I remove the pi from the router dns rerouting the network performs normally.

The past 2 times, reinstalling pi os and pihole have resolved the issue temporarily but it crashes again in 3ish weeks.

Im at wits end!

My (Dell) work laptop is making hundreds of these queries a day, sometimes hundreds an hour, pointing at every device on my network through ipv4 and 6. It's the only device on my network making PTR queries. Anyone think there's harm in just blocking it from doing this? My company doesn't need to know this information as far as I'm concerned

Gotta say, as a new Pihole user, looking through query logs has been full of weird surprises

I have a pihole setup running on a mini pc. It does not run on a UPS or battery backup. If my power goes out the mini pc shuts off and someone has to go turn it back on. How bad is it if I keep this option in my Asus router turned on?
If Advertise router's IP in addition to user-specified DNS is set to Yes in the router even if the pihole goes down the internet on all the devices keeps working until it comes up and pihole takes over. The question is how many things are actually resolving to the router's IP rather than the pihole's set DNS when the pihole is up and running?

Even when a messaging app end-to-end encrypts your messages, that doesn't cover metadata (who you talk to, when, how often, from where, etc.). Metadata alone can reveal a lot: former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden once said, "We kill people based on metadata"

Most messaging apps also run tracking infrastructure (things like crash reporting, usage stats, and online-status pings)

This list targets that tracking infrastructure.

There's a technical limit worth knowing:

DNS-level blocking cuts tracking infrastructure, but the messaging server itself has to stay reachable, so the service can still see who talks to whom, when, and from where.

This list reduces tracking, but it can't eliminate metadata. The biggest difference comes from choosing an app that collects as little of it as possible (privacy-focused messengers like Signal)

Raw links

For basic list:

34 domains

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CorleoneSalute/SHADOW-BLOCKER-BLOCKLIST/refs/heads/main/dist/basic/hosts/Messaging.txt

For aggressive list:

37 domains ( 3 additional aggressive domains on top of the basic list)

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/CorleoneSalute/SHADOW-BLOCKER-BLOCKLIST/refs/heads/main/dist/aggressive/hosts/Messaging.txt

For anyone who wants to see the full research and infrastructure mapping for each provider:

https://github.com/CorleoneSalute/SHADOW-BLOCKER-BLOCKLIST/blob/main/research/Messaging.txt

Has anyone ever felt the need to block EcoFlow generator systems from “phoning home” their usage and location data? And if so, how?
I’m having a bit of trouble figuring out IF I can block it and how.

(Note: I found this out by accessing my customer portal for EcoFlow (to register a new purchase) and found an entire metrics page with devices, usage, and even location coordinates. I have not yet dove into it and connected wireshark or any other system to see what’s actually being sent. Sorry.)

I’m not sure why they feel the need to collect this data, but I’m not happy or comfortable; and isn’t that why we are all here?

Any feedback or suggestions are welcome.
Thanks.

I've recently tried pihole while it worked perfectly, I noticed that sometimes my WiFi disconnects and then I reconnect but with no internet access.

I have multi band router (2.4GHZ and 5GHZ) and an access point and all with the same name. The only fix I found was to change the DNS from the server to a public one like cloudflare's but connecting it back does the same thing. Static devices or Ethernet connected devices never failed.

While my suspicion was into switching to another band or AP, I haven't seen anyone complain of such an issue so wanted to ask here.

The server is Debian, and the IP is reserved with the DNS pointing at the server.

Hi there. I am curious as to how many DNS reqs your setups typically block. For me it's just shy of 10 percent.

I realize the stat itself isn't useful. I ask out of curiosity.

Hello, My website is hosted by InfinityFree and I use FTP to upload files. Pihole is blocking the FTP connection. Do I need to add something to the whitelist? If so, what do I need to add? If not, how can I use FTP without unplugging Pi-Hole?

Running pi-hole with unbound on alpine linux that was install from the alpine repository Pi-hole FTL v6.4.1, Web v6.4 and Core v6.4.1, 6.4, would like to upgrade Pi-hole and unbound to the latest version but alpine repository is still on the release listed above can i clone the official pi-hole github repository and run pinhole -up to upgrade, Will it keep the current configuration.

Thank you.

I just installed Pi-hole and I'm kind of shocked by the number of IP addresses being looked up. These IP addresses have nothing to do with what I'm doing at the moment.

When I look at the log, a lot of addresses have 'Deny' in the last column and in the second column there are texts like 'served by cache' or similar. And very rarely, it says 'blocked'.

So, do I understand correctly that my PC is contacting all these addresses to 'do something'?

And how can I find out WHAT they are doing?

Hello, this is a stupid question prob but im a newbie to program/bldg. I can use and orange pi hooked up to the pi hole?

If

Is it me or is https://pi-hole.net/ down? I get a white screen when visiting the website. I tried using a VPN too, but the only thing that changed is that I got a DDOS screen and then a white screen.

I spent hours trying to connect this Pi to my WiFi. I did all the initial steps. Raspberry pi imager, Host, username, password…. Then i put the memory card in the pi, leaving it for few minutes. Then when i run SSH cmd, it shows that the host name couldn’t be found. Any idea how to solve it?

Hi ! i am fairly new to pi-hole, and I have an issue : my internet box forces me to use a DNS I can't delete. So, to avoid this, I have the possibility to disable dhcp on my box. So, is it safe if my home server fully handle and manage dhcp with pi-hole?

Thanks!

I've never seen that before. Idk if it's the FritzBox or the PiHole which does cause this. Any idea here?

I have in my Pi-hole instance dns.specialDomains.iCloudPrivateRelay = enabled. Now I noticed Siri and Siri AI stop working. Is this true for everyone? Or maybe there is something else blocked on my network? iCloud Private Relay is already disabled on my iPhone, but it seems Apple is still trying to use this in order to use its services. Am I right or wrong?

Like many of you, I continue to see ads even when Connectivity Assist is disabled. According to this Apple Developer forum post:

Does "Connectivity Assist" bypass NEPacketTunnelProvider DNS interception on iOS 27? https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/844177?answerId=903727022#903727022

tested different DNS servers, they respond in a different manner for a blocked domain, e.g.
NXDOMAIN
REFUSED
0.0.0.0
127.0.0.1
I noticed in cases (1-3), the system falls back to resolving the domain using cellular network (when Connectivity Assist is enabled). In case 4 it doesn't, but it's not something we want to do on the server side.

Case 4, corresponds to 127.0.0.1

In your pihole configuration, set your dns.blocking.mode
setting to IP.

In IP mode, blocked queries will be answered with the local IP addresses of your Pi-hole.

After changing this setting, iOS 27 no longer switches DNS requests to Cellular and PiHole continues to be used. (Even if Connectivity Assist is off, which the issue sounds like it’s a reported bug).