The file below is a comprehensive and regularly updated list of domains and IP addresses that are used for delivering advertisements. Please check the file description on this page for the most recent update and feel free to sync. This list is frequently updated in the following ways:

• new entries are added when new advertisements advertisements are spotted on websites.
• old entries are regularly deleted in order to avoid cluttering-up the files with domains and addresses that do not exist anymore.

The usual method of operation of these spam organisations is to register or lease domains for a short while and frequently unregister them so that spam filters such as these will not pick them up. If you look at other spam lists and check the domains and addresses you will notice that they may contain dead domains.

Since this list is comprehensive, additions will appear in the changelog. It is important to note that this domain list does not censor "self-spam" (banners or advertisements that are displayed using the same domain name or address path of a legitimate website). For example, a website that choses to spam itself by adding banners and other annoyances using its own URL (either as a subdomain or a website path from the root) is not censored by this list.

This database tries very hard to not block service providers that may be part of the hosting policy for hosted websites. The database does block "related spam", for example, on sourceforge.net or slashdot.net.

This list can be used in the following manner:

• In the /etc/hosts file (or using tcp-wrappers, /etc/hosts.deny) in order to redirect requests to the localhost or some invalid address. This method is slow even on powerful machines and, if the situation permits, it should be avoided.
• As part of a DNS system, by creating zones. This method may hog or stall the DNS server because it would require a large number of dummy zones to be created. On the other hand, this method is the most efficient because these domains will be blocked at the DNS level and the browser (or proxy) will never even contact the domain.
• In a proxying set-up, for example the proxy chaining method in order to filter spam for an entire network.

On Unix systems, you can download domains.txt to a folder and then run:

cat domains.txt | sed 's/^/127.0.0.1 /g' >> /etc/hosts

which will append all the spam domains to the /etc/hosts text file.

On Unix systems, you can download domains.txt to a folder and then run:

cat domains.txt | sed 's/^\(.*\)$/zone "\1" { type master; file "db.spam."; }/g' >> spamzones.txt

to generate zone lines to be used with a DNS service.

The following bash script will query each domain and then clean out the domains that are dead. It is perhaps a good idea to run it every week via cron to remove dead domains.

clean_domains.sh

#!/bin/bash
###########################################################################
##  Copyright (C) Wizardry and Steamworks 2014 - License: GNU GPLv3      ##
##  Please see: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html for legal details,  ##
##  rights of fair usage, the disclaimer and warranty conditions.        ##
###########################################################################
 
if [[ -z "$1" ]]; then
  echo "Syntax: $0 spam_domains.txt"
  exit 1
fi
 
DOMAIN_FILE="$1"
 
# Cull dead domains.
while read DOMAIN; do
  if [[ -z "$DOMAIN" ]]; then
  	continue;
  fi
  DNS_LOOKUP=`nslookup -timeout=1 -retry=0 -fail $DOMAIN | grep Name`
  if [[ ! -z "$DNS_LOOKUP" ]]; then
    echo "$DOMAIN" >> /tmp/spam_domains.txt
  fi
done < $DOMAIN_FILE
 
# Sort and clean
sort -u /tmp/spam_domains.txt > $DOMAIN_FILE
rm /tmp/spam_domains.txt

The code above can be saved to a file called clean_domains.sh and then executed with:

./clean_domains.sh domains.txt

Provided that domains.txt is in the current path from where you are running the script.