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How to stop adverts appearing on your Samsung TV
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guide.md

I'm getting adverts in my TV's UI, help!

Samsung's otherwise excellent 2016 range of UHD TVs received an update that added advertisements to the UI. This has been complained about at great length on Samsung's forums and repeatedly, Samsung have refused to add an option to remove them.

The ads interrupt the clean UI of the TV and are invasive. Here's an example of how they look:

one two

This guide was originally posted on Samsung's TV forums but unfortunately, that site is a super-slow and barely accessible unusable mess.

Ok, so how do I get rid of them?

The easiest way is to use another DNS provider that allows blacklisting.

In this example, we'll use Cisco's OpenDNS.

Step One - Signing up

Go to opendns.com/ and sign up.

Step Two - Creating the blacklist

Once you've signed up and are logged into OpenDNS, head to your network's settings and find the 'Web Content Filtering' section. Here is the list of domains that I have identified, we're going to add them one-by-one to the block list, detailed under Manage Individual Domains. This list contains everything Samsung-related, but at the very minimum block samsungads.com.

config.samsungads.com
gpm.samsungqbe.com
log-config.samsungacr.com
samsung.com
samsungacr.com
samsungads.com
samsungcloudsolution.com
samsungcloudsolution.net
samsungotn.net

web content filtering

Simply ensure Always Block is selected, paste the domain into the box and click Add Domain.

Step Three - Configuring your TV

Now we're nearly there, we just need to tell the TV to use OpenDNS rather than your ISP's default.

In the settings section, hit 'Network Status', your TV should check some things for a couple of seconds before showing you a screen that looks something like this:

DNS Settings

Select IP Settings and configure the DNS server to point at 208.67.222.222 or 208.67.220.220.

Step Four - Make sure it's working

If everything went to plan, you should no longer see ads in your Hub Bar. It is possible that some ads are cached on your TV and may remain for a while, but once they expire and disappear they shouldn't come back.

@sanderlv
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sanderlv commented Jul 10, 2021 •
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Blocked last week following above mentioned urls. Ads gone :-).

But now prime video does not work, netflix etc. does but only prime not.

Enabling dns again enables prime...

Any idea?

@peteryates
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@sanderlv - I'm afraid not, but I'd recommend trying to add them one-at-a-time, starting with samsungads.com. On my TV, that one alone blocks the actual adverts appearing in the UI, the others appear to prevent telemetry and other creepy data-gathering.

You'd expected better from Samsung. Oh no, wait a minute, their CEO's in jail for bribery and dishonesty 😅

@chazul
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chazul commented Dec 18, 2021 •
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adgrx.com now redirects to adgear.com

I started seeing an ad in the "Home" menu starting a month or so ago in the Samsung TV I had for 2 years now. I was somewhat forgiving it until I started seeing an another ad embedded in between channel list. That infuriated me and quick Googling landed me here and looking up the IP addresses the TV was connecting (via Router log) found some other domains.

Also as jsCommander said tried blocking any URL with 'samsung' in it via the router (ASUS RT-AC66U, just entering samsung in the Firewall's blocked list would block any URL with samsung as a part). But then it seems to block "Samsung TV Plus" channels (free streaming channels).

So I changed the DNS IP to Open DNS in the TV network settings and then blocked the following channels in Open DNS page:

adgear.com
adgrx.com
digitaldreamsinc.com
doubleclick.net
samsung.com
samsung.net
samsungads.com
samsungotn.net
samsungrm.net

@jihunx
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jihunx commented Mar 13, 2022 •
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@chazul

It works.

  1. ASUS RT-AC86U > Firewall > URL Filter
  2. Enable URL Filter: Enabled
  3. Filter table type: Deny List
  4. URL Filter List
  • adgear.com
  • adgrx.com
  • samsungads.com

@plueschpruem
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Today a pink ad banner popped up in my frickin' EPG.
Bad enough that the EPG gets slower with every update, but now they have lost their marbles.
Thanks for the list!

@rowbawts
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rowbawts commented Jul 7, 2022

Does anyone know what domain I would want to block on my router to stop any possibility of getting an OTA? I'm following a thread on AVSForum that is recently covering a downgrade "update" and a lot of people have claimed to have their TV update with the auto-update option disabled I've been lucky so far to avoid that but want to make it more certain.

@Hillsie
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Hillsie commented Aug 7, 2022

Setting>support>About This TV has a link to the GNU General Public License
https://opensource.samsung.com/opensource/19_DTV_MuseM/seq/0
🙃️ ... yes ... open source. Wonder how to flash the tv with jb version?
https://opensource.samsung.com/uploadSearch?searchValue=tv

@absolute1701
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So I've tried the above, and blocked all URLs in the opening post both on my router AND via OpenDNS... and I'm still getting ads. I can't change DNS settings directly on my router so using a different DNS service there is not an option. Has anyone else had ads creep through again? Any other options? Really sick of this forced advertising bull**** from Samsung. I never want to buy a Samsung product again.

@vfiksdal
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vfiksdal commented Jan 1, 2023

Adding the full list in my dlink router's webfilter function blocked every streaming service -- youtube, hbo, netflix and prime where all blocked. I removed every entry except "samsungads.com" and added "doubleclick.net" for good measure.

Seems to work for now, and other telemetry options can be disabled directly in the tv.

@sivadnivek
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Thank you so much for this. I was super disappointed after buying a samsung TV, I needed that domains list real bad. ♥

@rafm5
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rafm5 commented Jun 20, 2023

samsungacr.com
samsungads.com
adgrx.com
adgear.com

Adding these four will do the job!

@sanderlv
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3 of them I had in for over 6 months.
Did not do anything.

Only samsungacr.com is new, will check andreport back.

@FloydNex
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FloydNex commented Aug 1, 2024

Works few years and now ads are back, is there new server I can add to opendns ?

@peteryates
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peteryates commented Aug 1, 2024 •
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Did you try the new ones mentioned above?

@FloydNex
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FloydNex commented Aug 2, 2024

I did before comment but I guess some of the adds were on cache on the tv. This morning everything is fine, thank you :)

@sanderlv
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I have all names listed in this topic in my dns...

I have ads again...

Any new names to add?

@FloydNex
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I think there's an add server that is not listed, got one add once a month or something like that, got one yesterday too and this morning it was fine.

@sanderlv
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So which ones did you add?

@FloydNex
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None, I haven't found it yet

@peteryates
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If you take a look in your OpenDNS logs/stats you'll see the in-use domains listed. It wouldn't suprise me if Samsung have added a few more over the years, or if they start skipping DNS altogether.

@FloydNex
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FloydNex commented Nov 23, 2024 •
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Thank you peter, It was disable (by default I guess?), I've enabled it and next time I see adds I'll take a look and if I find something I'll put the adress right here.

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