I have a Samsung smart TV that is configured to use my Pihole instance as its DNS. When it was first set up, it looked up a blocked Samsung domain every few seconds whenever it was on (this is with ACR tracking “disabled” in the settings). Now it doesn’t anymore, but I still get activity from its IP address looking domains for NTP and looking up Samsung domains not blocked by my blocklists, but much less often now. Weirdly, it isn’t looking up domains for YouTube anymore despite us watching videos on the included app. Could it have found a way to bypass my DNS server (maybe a hard coded Samsung DNS?)

  • woosaah@lemmy.ml
    5·
    4 years ago

    lots of stuff is using its own DNS now days unfortunately. its still viable for ad blocking in a browser that respects your DNS settings, but not for embedded devices

    • jazzfes@lemmy.ml
      3·
      4 years ago

      HTPC

      I haven’t bought a monitor / TV in probably 8 years but was recently thinking about it… however really disliked that pretty much all TVs today are Smart TVs which actually made me wonder:

      When selecting the monitor, what do you need to check when you want one that will work well for sports / soccer?

      • AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.mlOP
        2·
        4 years ago

        however really disliked that pretty much all TVs today are Smart TVs

        I think you should be fine if you never connect it to the internet. We’re not at the stage where TVs have their own independent data connection (yet).

        Though you can still get dumb consumer TVs if you look hard enough, but I agree that they’re becoming rarer.

    • AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.mlOP
      2·
      4 years ago

      I definitely would, but again, I don’t own the TV nor do I normally watch it (I mostly watch videos on my Degoogled phone or Linux PC).

  • ufra@lemmy.ml
    1·
    4 years ago

    Possibly realted: Your Smart TV is probably ignoring your PiHole https://labzilla.io/blog/force-dns-pihole

    Fortunately, with a few simple firewall rules, you can intercept these hardcoded DNS queries and redirect them to your PiHole. These instructions are for pfSense, however you should be able to adapt them for Sophos XG, Ubiquiti EdgeRouter, etc