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One Hosts file to rule them all

everythingisnt.com — Looking for ad-less surfing? Check out this Hosts file, which should be good to suppress 99% of the popups and other annoying ad-engines.

Who dugg this? Made popular Jul 5, 2006

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  • aptget, on 10/12/2007, -5/+56Adblock Filterset G is much better because it can use wildcards and regex.
    This would be good for other browsers though.
  • elephantdog, on 10/12/2007, -1/+31@r2d7 sure do, I skip commercials on TV too. What I choose to look at is my business. You have a webserver and don't like it, make every ad a captcha that I must understand in order to view the real content, or ban my IP, or do whatever you want.
  • Namco, on 10/12/2007, -20/+50What's SlashDot?
  • RadiantBeing, on 10/12/2007, -4/+30You call that a hosts file? This is a real hosts file. 1.5 megabytes of hosty goodness:

    http://hostsfile.mine.nu/downloads/
  • p4r0l3, on 10/12/2007, -2/+23Agreed. Adblock is much better and no, it doesn't download the ads but not display them. Maybe you're thinking of like GreaseMonkey or something.
  • DarthTurducken, on 10/12/2007, -1/+22@r2d7

    You're a marketing guy aren't you?

    News flash: Nobody likes ads
  • Arevos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17No, by default Adblock doesn't download the ads it blocks. However, you do have the option of enabling downloading, if you so wish.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+17Summary of Seumas's comment:

    Other webmasters using ads are "*****" but he's different because he has a "niche" market.
  • phlll, on 10/12/2007, -4/+16You know, like "other people". The ones who pay to see movies, and listen to music. Them.
  • creeptick, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14Why block the ads? Because I don't ever buy anything from them and they provide zero service value. Since I never buy anything from them, the bandwidth costs to the ad providers cost them more than if I don't see the ads. So I'm actually doing them a favor by saving their bandwidth and blocking their ads. See?

    (P.S. Do you also watch TV commercials without muting them out of your absurd sense of communistic fairness? Just wondering...)
  • databasecowboy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11why I block ads:

    1 -wasted bandwidth, I am on a limited connection
    2 - I hate ads that bounce around and annoy my eyes when I am trying to read

  • zimm, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12that hosts file is tiny. compared to even the gorilla version.

    and its full of errors too.

    also xp 2k and vista should not use a hosts file without turning off the dns client service either. or you will have boot times around 10 minutes.
  • Ashex, on 10/12/2007, -10/+18Although this is a good idea, this can slow down your browsing quite a bit.

    From what I know, when your browsing, windows will check every domain/ip you visit against that hosts file. And a hosts file with lots of hosts = lots of checking.
  • fiftycents, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11"We can't just not watch commercials, thats like stealing TV!"
    -Homer Simpson

    Do you seriously believe that? Wow... I didnt even realize that there was anybody who actually thinks that way towards advertising.
  • zone, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8i tried it once.. and got a lot of connection error messages where the ads were. not so pretty.
  • wesmoc, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10Wow.. the one in this article is a teeny-tiny hosts file. The one that comes with adfilter.pl (a SQUID proxy filter plugin written by Dusin Anders (http://www.samag.com/articles/2003/0302/)) is easily 10x larger and works very well.

    And the one RadiantBeing pointed to blows both of them away!

    Wow.. It's stuff like this that makes me keep coming back to digg.com! :)

  • StinkiePhish, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11A major problem with this method is that the site doesn't get ad revenue. I don't want to see ads, and there is zero chance of me clicking on them, but if I can, I would like to give the site I'm reading at least an ad impression.
  • funksta, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10@r2d7:

    Why would you choose to view ads if you have the opportunity to block them? Until ads become well-targeted (like the stuff Google is allegedly working on), they will always just be a nuisance. Adblock + filterset G work extremely well in my experience.
  • darkliquid, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10These don't just block ads. They block sites known to install malware or spyware on your system. I've been using it for years now and i don't see anything wrong with it. As a result my adaware and spybot scans come up with almost nil.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9OK, in answer to this and every other "slow down your browsing" post in the comments here:

    NO, USING A HOSTS FILE WILL NOT SLOW DOWN BROWSING THE INTERNET. REALLY.

    Perhaps, if you are using a machine with less than 8mB of memory, then yes, loading a text file into the system memory at startup will affect performance. If you're using a machine built after 1998, you should be OK.

    Why do people think that this would slow down a system? HOSTS is just a cached list of DNS entries. Why would performing a DNS lookup _locally_ take longer than on a remote system? Do people think that packets flow faster between a client machine and a remote DNS server of choice than electrical signals to and from your RAM?
  • numist, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8if you turn off client dns lookup in your services, the slowdown is trivial in practice.

    this is old news though...
  • aldenhg, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Yeah, really. I've got no problem with on-page ads, just so long as they don't make noise. I swear to god I'll boycott any company that ever uses singing ads. Interestingly enough, I also don't use MySpace.
  • databasecowboy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6there are ads on digg? This host file really works. Never realized it was a commercial site, just thought it was funded by Apple or something :)

    Since we provide the content, shouldn't we get paid to post or something?
  • iamsantino, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8I've been using the one on http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm for quite some time now, no complaints.
  • dearreid, on 10/12/2007, -10/+15Would all of you ad-blockers out there prefer to pay a subscription fee for every site on the internet? I just don't get why the ads bother you so much that you'd go out of your way to block them all. Most sites (and I emphasize "most") that I visit are pretty tasteful in the number of ad placements on their pages. I don't mind them at all, and the more relevant they are, the better.

    Sure beats the alternative, which is paying for the content.
  • donutz, on 10/12/2007, -5/+10This hosts file is updated very frequently:
    http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -6/+11Maybe some of us prefer not to spend every second of every day of our 72 years on this planet being accosted by advertising, logos, trademarks and ***** jingles.

    Not to mention, many advertisers and advertising channels are lacking in scruples and we don't like to have rou existance on the net completely monitored, tracked and archived by these commercial adservices.

    Doubleclick come to mind any?
  • pak314, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5There is Security NOW podcast that talks about this. One suggestion from the podcast is to use 0.0.0.0 instead of 127.0.0.1 if you run a web server locally. I haven't tried it out myself though since I use FireFox AdBlock feature.
  • godmode, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8I used to use a hosts file for IE, but it really annoyed me because all the adspaces redirected to 127.0.0.1 and you couldnt use the Back buttons, because they would just go back in the adspace. So if there were multiple ads on a page it was frustrating to move back and forward.
  • hcl40u, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4The only thing people hate more than ads is paying money to access a site.

    I rather just turn off animations/sound by default to eliminate most of the annoyances with ads.
  • dearreid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5There aren't enough people willing to pay for the content on the web to make that worthwhile. Let's say digg decided they wanted to continue making $800k per month (or whatever), but not show ads. You'd probably have less than 10% of current users willing to pay for it, and therefore the subscription fee would have to be ridiculously high. And with only a small number of users, the social nature of the site would start to break down and become irrelevant.

    Would you pay $20 for a magazine? $300 a month for TV? The prices we pay for media today barely cover the cost of distribution. The expensive part--the part advertising pays for--is the production of content.
  • dearreid, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I block ads on sites like that by not visiting them at all. Responsible publishers won't deliver a site with that kind of ad overkill. And responsible advertisers use a frequency cap on intrusive ad units like the floater in that example. Of course, if you're blocking cookies and your IP address, they won't be able to recognize if they've served you an ad already, so you defeat their attempts at politeness.
  • attractivetb, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I can't believe how many commenters are coming out in favour of internet ads. Seriously, web advertising is intrusive and annoying. I don't know how or why anyone would surf the web without good adblocking software. Adblock has fundamentally changed web-browsing for me (for the better).

    Are you recommending that web users remve their Adblock extension (or whatever they are using) out of the goodness of their hearts? I could never go back to the pop-up and banner laden web, but please feel free, if it makes you feel good inside.
  • Teratogen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I tried one of the huge hosts files on my win 2k box and it slowed EVERYTHING down to molasses. Took me 10 minutes to find and edit the hosts file back to its default.
  • sunnyd, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Great democracy system here, I suggest a meaningful and perhaps a better alternative and get modded down for some reason. Yes, the software itself hasn't been updated since 2005, but the updates are nearly weekly. I just updated mine yesterday with a hosts file that was 5 days recent. An application this simple (which all it does is update a single file) does not need a new version very often.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5hosts files have been around for a very long time, but my main concern with blocking ads is that sites the depend on it will lose money and will not be able to stick around. Sites like digg depend on the revenue, and other startups that most users find useful would not exist if users just blocked the ads.
  • SolariPicasso, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I have used someonewhocares.org list for years. I am shocked when I use another machine without hostfile ad blocking. What's nice is that you can write your own ads, effectively blocking out the unwanted crap and placing links to your favorites instead. Call the Whaaaaambulance for DIGG becuz they may not get some add revenue...I remember a better web, a cleaner web not so full of Spam, Porn, popups, and the junk out there. Viva Ad Blockers screw the man!
  • Teratogen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This huge hosts file slowed my win 2k box down to molasses... I'd like to use the hosts file but not at the expense of a slow computer. Anyone else experience this?
  • raccettura, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I'll keep with just popup blocking.

    I'm wiling to support sites that I visit (like Digg). I'd hate to see the ad model completely break, and force them all to go 100% paid. Just wouldn't be good.
  • dearreid, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4So do mine, and I don't use any special blocking or hostfiles outside of the pop-up blocking built into Firefox.
  • Visceral, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Installed one of the many host files mentioned here, reduced my browsing to a crawl. Uninstalled.
  • RoboRay, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Unobtrusive ads, like Google's text-based ones, are fine. I've even clicked on a few of them. Annoying flashing, blinking and spinning signs, or sounds, drive me away from websites. Animations that actually spread out across the screen and cover up the content I'm trying to view drove me to use an ad-blocking HOSTS file. So now, I don't see any ads at all, except Google's simple, unobtrusive ones. I even still click on them, from time to time.
  • databasecowboy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Not only does it improve my pageload speed, by not having to download several ads from multiple servers to load one page, but it improves page readability so it speeds up surfing in two ways.
  • bobdole34, on 10/12/2007, -1/+30.0.0.0 will cause Firefox to IMMEDIATLY discard requests instead of trying to connect to the local ip and failling (still quick, but bad if you are running a dev webserver or anything else on port 80)
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3It's fairly ridiculous to propose that native DNS caching done by the OS will be slower than some third-party add-on to a web browser.
  • EmmSee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Hmm... if everyone did this we wouldn't have any great free sites we all love like Digg.
  • TheSeeker11, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I use Ad Muncher, it really is a great piece of software - http://www.admuncher.com

  • ShadowRelic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3if you start useing other numbers other than 172.0.0.1 then your computer has to actually look for that ip, the idea behind using 127.0.0.1 is that your PC can find itself instantly... so you block adds while speeding up browsing.
  • Aninhumer, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5@r2d7:
    If the majority of people want to block adverts, then the adverts were pointless anyway.

    What's more, AFAIK most adverts are pay per click, and I never click. They have lost nothing!
  • uownedge, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3While this particular hosts file isn't the best, overall this is a good idea. I've been using one for quite some time, and not too long ago also installed adblock. They make an outstanding pair.

    The worst of it is, I don't think I'd care about the ads so much if the majority of them weren't either seizure inducing flash adds, or poorly placed, ugly looking Ad Sense/Google ads....blah.
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