anti-AD

anti-AD is a regularly updated blocklist aimed at the Chinese-language internet. Its purpose is to block ads and stop websites from quietly collecting personal data. It focuses on achieving a high hit rate for Chinese ad domains, meaning it catches a large proportion of ads that other general blocklists miss.

The list works at the DNS level. Instead of blocking ads after a page loads, it prevents your device from even reaching the ad server by blocking the domain name lookup. This approach works across websites, smart TV boxes, and in-app ads inside mobile applications. It also blocks domains known to gather analytics data and personal information without user awareness.

To use anti-AD, you add one of its filter files to a supported tool. The project provides files in multiple formats to cover the most common network tools: AdGuardHome, dnsmasq, Pi-Hole, Surge, Clash, mihomo, smartdns, and sing-box. Each tool has a matching file format available for download directly from the project's website or from GitHub.

Behind the scenes, the project merges dozens of upstream blocklists from other well-known sources, removes duplicate entries, strips out expired domains, and applies additional processing to improve accuracy. This is meant to reduce false positives (accidentally blocking things that are not ads) while maximizing coverage of actual ad and tracking domains. A curated list of disputed domains is also maintained separately for cases where a domain serves both ads and legitimate functions, so users can decide for themselves whether to block them.

The project is fully open source, and all filter rules are sourced from upstream lists or contributed by users through the issue tracker. The README and most of the project documentation are written in Chinese.