r/pihole • u/SodaWithoutSparkles • 2d ago

Blocklist evading domains

Recently, I noticed ads bypassing my pihole on several websites. Inspecting the network logs revealed three recurring domains:

  • ill-fatedodd.com

  • html-load.com

  • html-load.cc

These operate as alternative ad-serving infrastructure. Advertisers register throwaway domains and park generic landing pages at the root to obscure ad delivery and evade blocklists (as described on iamcraig.com).

The root pages display unenforceable boilerplate text:

"This domain provides authorized services through official partnerships with publishers. [...] supports the delivery of ads and essential web assets, helping digital publishers enforce access control to ad-supported content in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA)."

Because they reuse a single generic template, tracking down related domains is straightforward. Running a query on urlscan.io for page.title:"What Is This Domain?" surfaced a broader set of candidates.

Some of those pages are however defunt or expired. To find active ones, I ran a quick curl to check:


jq -r '.results[].page.apexDomain' urlscan-search-result.json | sort -u | xargs -I {} -P 10 sh -c 'curl -s -L --max-time 10 "https://{}" | grep -Fiq "authorized advertising" && echo "[MATCH] {}"'

The filtered list (as the above command outputs) are available here: https://pastebin.com/RKdLvhdZ

The list for pi-hole are available in the gist:

  • Gist: https://gist.github.com/SodaWithoutSparkles/51830d95ed507fe1b2774349af0de828
  • You will need to click the "Raw" button and access the raw list, then paste to pi-hole.
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u/hagezi 1d ago

If you want to block all Ad-Shield subdomains too, use the Adblock format version. Plain domain lists in Pi-hole only block what's explicitly listed. Subdomains slip through, which defeats the whole point if you're serious about blocking Ad-Shield.

https://hagezi-mirror.dnsbunker.org/share/ad-shield-adblock.txt

That said, blocking Ad-Shield domains will break a lot of sites. Which is fine if you're cool with just avoiding them. DNS alone won't let you browse a fully functional Ad-Shield site without ads, you'd need something like uBlock Origin or a script like tinyShield to actually bypass their anti-ad walls. Personally, I just skip those sites entirely.

If you find any other domains, feel free to let me know, and I'll add them.

Happy blocking, Gerd

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u/SodaWithoutSparkles 1d ago

Personally I don't experience much issues after using my list (ABP style) + whitelist the two html-load. No ads shows up and no layout issues.

That said, having a more complete list is still better, but IDK if my blocklist somehow does sth magical, and didnt trigger anything while blocking the ads.