Block ads, tracking and other garbage with dnsmasq

There is an automatically updated, moderated and optimized list available on GitHub for blocking ads, trackers and other online garbage:

https://github.com/notracking/hosts-blocklists

The list is designed for use with dnsmasq. There is also a validation script available at https://github.com/bahamas10/notracking. You can configure automatic update of the list by following these steps:

1. 1. Install Node.JS that is a requirement for the notracking validate script:
      $ curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_8.x | sudo -E bash -
$ sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
   2. Clone the notracking repository:
      $ cd /opt/
$ git clone git://github.com/bahamas10/notracking.git
   3. Configure crontab to download updated lists on a daily basis by creating the file /etc/cron.d/notracking with the following content:
      0 6 * * * root cd /opt/notracking;./update;mv /opt/notracking/*.txt /etc/dnsmasq.d/;/usr/sbin/service dnsmasq restart
   4. Disable the CONFIG_DIR option in /etc/default/dnsmasq by comment out the following row:
      #CONFIG_DIR=/etc/dnsmasq.d,.dpkg-dist,.dpkg-old,.dpkg-new
   5. Add these two lines to the file /etc/dnsmasq.conf:
      conf-file=/etc/dnsmasq.d/domains.txt
addn-hosts=/etc/dnsmasq.d/hostnames.txt

To get the configuration running immediately you can manually execute the commands from the cronjob or you can wait for it to run by it self at 06:00 the morning after you configured dnsmasq.

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