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The Power of the Hosts File
Block Ads with a Simple Text File
Dec 2004
I do not like advertisements on web sites for many reasons. First, they seem to be the most resource hog stuff on my computer. When I open up the front pages from one of the main on-line news sites in Hungary, http://index.hu, quickly the CPU usage goes up to 50% (Intel Celeron 1400 MHz) and continues to vary between 20-50% while the page is open. I have counted 9 flashing-moving-blinking ads on the front page. I particularly do not like those that float over the main window and makes reading text impossible until I find the small-hidden-in-the-corner X button to close them.
The other thing I dislike in ads that they consume valuable bandwidth, sometimes more data travels as advertisement as valuable data. This is really annoying on a slower connection, such as GSM, GPRS or the old 56k modem connection. At my GPRS provider I can download a maximum of 100 MB per month, every bit over it costs a lot. I mainly use it for e-mail, but occasionally I have to bring up web sites, too, and I am really annoyed when 1-2 MB goes down of my monthly limit just because of these stupid ads.
There is a solution to block a serious number of ads by a simple text file, called hosts, which is a list of site names and the corresponding IP address, some kind of a local DNS name cache for Windows. Clever people made a list of the most common advertisement servers and made them refer to 127.0.0.1, which is the local machine - the result is no ad, just a page error!
So, what you have to do is to browse to bluetack.co.uk, select "HOSTS" on the left side menu and follow the instructions. Basically you download the hosts file and put it in the right folder in Windows and there you go. There are many such hosts files on the net out there, but I have found that this one works particularly good and there is a good explication besides. You can find an alternative hosts file at mvps.org/winhelp2002, at accs-net.com/hosts or try Mike's Ad Blocking Hosts file, which has an installer.
The different Windows folder locations:
Here's a screenshot of the hosts file:
List of blocked ad servers in bluetack.co.uk's hosts file.
Here's what you can expect if it works:
Blocked ads by hosts file at epionions.com
The beauty of the thing is that if you want to stop blocking ads, just simply remove the hosts file.
Anyway, I do not know why they bother themselves with these ads, I have clicked on ads less then 10 times during the last years and have never bought a thing based on on-line ads.
Your comments are welcome here.
Last edited on 29-Jan-2006.
(c) Imre Oliver Kozak and @Foxpop.
