Energized Ultimate lists blocking NextDNS

Calvin Hobbes Came to report the same bug , my browser dns lookups were getting blocked too. Was using nextdns.io _brave/ settings/secure dns/custom.

Thanks for suggesting the allow list solution.

Seojoon You that's weird, I wonder why so few? Some even have 0 entries!

This makes me wonder is it really Energized Ultimate that's blocking nextdns.io or is it NextDNS's fetched list that does it. Maybe it fetched it wrong, or processed it wrongly.

because, either E.U. fixed it already, or they never had nextdns.io in their blocked list

Emanuel 

https://block.energized.pro/ultimate/formats/domains.txt

I can't find it here so I don't think it is the energized ultimate blocking it but it could be a problem with NextDNS

Seojoon You you're right they're using the domains.txt one, which has 628834 entries, and indeed it's not there, but if it says 1385 entries... who knows what processing they've done to it, maybe that's what causes it to block *.io ? because github.io doesn't work either, or anything *.io ?

Kalev G you shouldn’t need to be connected to change your local dns settings.   I too had to change mine in order to remove the Energizer blocklists, but there was no need to be connected to anything.  

Kalev G I've already explained on another thread but NextDNS are using AI for Pron/Adult sites in order to make their protection proactive instead of reactive. This does result in a few FPs as you mentioned as some Adult sites share characteristics with legitimate sites, a Harvard domain was blocked from the CNAME, as that domain was belonging to a website design site that was hosting the fronted of the said Harvard domain.

As website design/hosters can be shared by verity of different subjects, it's not too unexpected and I'm pretty sure they're fixing it per report but it's only natural for AI to have some flaws as it needs to be deployed in the real world for smaller issues like those to be fixed.

The official NextDNS account already explained but, they don't modify or change the filters/lists, so it's hard to blame them when Energized maintainers mess something up that in return hurts your experience, if they modified or changed Blocklists, it would create a whole new level of issues as maintainers would need to fix things for both their main lists and their modified siblings. So I completely agree with their stance and as the user, it isn't your fault but it's not their fault either as you choose Energized and they simply applied the filter of your choice.

I've been using NextDNS for years now and have my family on it as well, for a year and a half now, I've never had a single hitch or issue, I use lite filters like OISD to ensure there are the least amount of FPs and haven't had a single complaint personally or from my parents, my smaller sibling, and my sister in Uni, so a wide variety of users.

NextDNS is a tool, you're the one to set it up and it just reacts on your preferences, the only minor issue is as you've pointed out Porn started blocking a few things and there were new threads for it, but I'd say it's more than worth it dealing with a few hitched to have fully AI based completely proactive protection against possibly all categories someday, at least I hope so.

Kalev G I also wanted to recommend you two things, first of all, using a more comfortable filter would definitely help with the maintenance aspect of things, OISD/1HostLite are great filters that have very little false positives.

But even OISD had an issue with blocking an Akamai CDN domain that was used as the backend for most Apple services, I didn't personally feel this though as I don't use any Apple services nor devices.

So you can't expect perfection, but NextDNS gives you the option to change and modify things to your liking if you have any issues.

On Chrome/Firefox/Brave and other Chromium/Mozilla based browsers, you can change the settings of your DNS, so if anything similar to this were to happen, you can temporarily change to a third party DNS to whitelist any domains that might be causing issues like the case with Energized blocking NextDNS.

I've also looked at the service you've mentioned and it seems like it's being discontinued from what I've seen on Google with the Verge covering it.

I also wouldn't even recommend services without the ability to whitelist things yourself unless it's extremely well maintained as with NextDNS you can whitelist things, otherwise the issue is only resolved by reporting it and waiting for the service owners to see and fix it, this process is likely to annoy you more than simply whitelist the site on NextDNS until it's fully fixed by Maintainers/NextDNS for FPs on their AI.

Kalev G word