[proposal] divest blocklist - domains only

[Crewman6639 4]

Name: Divested Computing Domains Only Blocklist

Description: Ready to use lists combined from many permissively licensed sources. Typically updated weekly. 
License: Curated list from multiple open licenses
Link: Not sure if the domains only or hosts format would be preferred.

There are other lists that are available on the site but the domains only list is the specific one I am proposing.

[veep1 1]

Can you provide more information. I am familiar with Divested Computing and DivestOS, but was unaware that they maintain blocklists.

What makes you interested in this particular blocklist? What advantage or niche does it serve compared with other options?

[Crewman6639 4]

On 2/7/2024 at 6:18 PM, veep1 said:

Can you provide more information. I am familiar with Divested Computing and DivestOS, but was unaware that they maintain blocklists.

What makes you interested in this particular blocklist? What advantage or niche does it serve compared with other options?

I think people underestimate the amount of contributions Divested makes to the privacy community and FOSS community as whole. I don't want to make this response seem like some sort of advertisement but I do recommend checking out all the things they do. I am sure there are other apps / projects they are apart of that you might recognize.

As for what advantages - The list is curated, by what I think is a trusted source in the FOSS / privacy community, and integrates a lot of other well known blocks lists into theirs. If you take a look at the host file you can see all the other sources they pull from. 

I also think a big advantage of the list is that it is constantly maintained (updated ~1/week) and evolving. They are also very transparent about what domains they have added or removed and why.

Personally I think it would be nice to have a list that will cover a lot of bases without breaking a lot of sites. Instead of having to toggle 10 different lists and hope its covered what you need.

For anyone that wants to, you could use the Domains only with wildcards and add it to your ublock extension to give the blocklist a "test drive" and make your own evaluations and come back and tell me what you think.

[OpenSourcerer 1441]

Added it to my Pi-Hole to test it a bit.

[Crewman6639 4]

21 hours ago, OpenSourcerer said:

Added it to my Pi-Hole to test it a bit.

cool! I will be interested to hear what you think.

[OpenSourcerer 1441]

Testing complete. I have removed the list from my Pi-Hole since it contains way too many false positives. While affected websites generally remain intact, there are some CDNs listed affecting some content and/or functionality on those websites.

Cannot wholeheartedly recommend.

[Crewman6639 4]

On 2/12/2024 at 2:06 PM, OpenSourcerer said:

Testing complete. I have removed the list from my Pi-Hole since it contains way too many false positives. While affected websites generally remain intact, there are some CDNs listed affecting some content and/or functionality on those websites.

Cannot wholeheartedly recommend.

Fair enough. I appreciate you taking the time to atleast test it.

I have not had any issues using it with my home network, other then the occasional website for work needing to be whitelisted (which is not an issue specific to just this block list). Can you provide some false positive examples you ran into? I will take a look and see if I need to adjust settings in my own pi-hole as well.

[OpenSourcerer 1441]

• On Crunchyroll News, the Storyblok CDN (a.storyblok.com) is being blocked. As a result, the news items don't have images.
• On Lenovo, BazaarVoice (apps.bazaarvoice.com) is being blocked. As a result, some fuctionality of product pages is missing.

.

[Kod 0]

 

On 12/18/2023 at 9:53 PM, Crewman6639 said:

Name: Divested Computing Domains Only Blocklist

Description: Ready to use lists combined from many permissively licensed sources. Typically updated weekly. 
License: Curated list from multiple open licenses
Link: Not sure if the domains only or hosts format would be preferred.

There are other lists that are available on the site but the domains only list is the specific one I am proposing.

I've found the domains-only list to be extremely comprehensive.

I'm using it with dnscrypt-proxy to have greater control over the blocked content.

So far, it's been functioning flawlessly.

The list boasts an impressive 1,500,000+ domains, with 1,100,000 of those already covered by my existing 12 lists. This means that future updates and lists management will be significantly lighter.

Thanks to Crewman6639.