We have a family 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?)

(The TV is my parents’ and they want to keep using the smart features. If it were up to me, it’d be barred from our Wi-Fi by now.)

  • ufra
    link
    fedilink
    33 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