If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. |
|
|
Thread Tools | Rating: | Display Modes |
#31
|
|||
|
|||
I have a fantastic HOSTS file (where can I post it for others to benefit)?
On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 00:18:53 +0000 (UTC), Ned Turnbull
wrote: On Fri, 29 Aug 2014 21:03:18 -0300, Shadow wrote: Zip it, make a torrent and upload it to a tracker. Post the magnet URL here. That's a very interesting idea! I have *never* uploaded (seeded?) a torrent in my life! [I have downloaded torrents, e.g., my Linux distribution.] So, I will see if I can figure out *how* to "seed" a torrent. If I do seed, can I keep my IP address anonymous (since it's fixed) when I create a torrent? Your torrent client will create a torrent for you. No IP address is involved. When you upload it to a tracker, they will get your IP. But a hosts file would not draw any more attraction than a private email letter. OK, OK. Someone will be watching. The problem is when you seed it you will have to be online, so that unique seeder will be your IP. One you get people downloading, their IPs will appear too, so it will be hard to see which one you are. Which is why when people seed new stuff it's usually from multiple hosts. Even so, you will be far more "private" than if you upload to Dropbox. once a popup happens, I simply put it in the hosts file, and that popup never happens again. Of course, as you imply, I don't go *back*, years later, and revisit them. So, like any hosts file, you'll have to decide for yourself if you want the ones I've added. If it's worthwhile, I can figure out a command that will strip out of my current hosts file all the hosts that are in the MVP hosts file, so, the result would be *just* the eight thousand that I have added myself. There is windows freeware that can do that, or just convert both to Unix text and do a diff. You can then *look* at those eight thousand, and judge for yourself if you want to add them or not. If that would be more useful, I can upload just my additions, instead. Note: But, of course, then the user has to *merge* the two, which is easy for many of us on Linux but Windows users may have a problem because of the different way Linux and Windows stores ASCII text file line feeds and the end of file character. I really don't mind ads. As long as they are not too annoying, like that girl doing froggy jumps or whatever on the Piratebay pages. Oh ... that's geolocation and analytics. Pronto ... blocked. 127.0.0.1 main.exoclick.com 127.0.0.1 static-ssl.exoclick.com 127.0.0.1 ads.exoclick.com 127.0.0.1 syndication.exoclick.com I just block the geolocation, analytics and (best I can) canvassing stuff. And of course, any social media links. []'s -- Don't be evil - Google 2004 We have a new policy - Google 2012 |
Ads |
#32
|
|||
|
|||
I have a fantastic HOSTS file (where can I post it for others to benefit)?
On Fri, 29 Aug 2014 22:16:45 -0400, "Mayayana"
wrote: | Where can I post a 25,000 line text file for others to benefit? | I certainly wouldn't want a HOSTS file that big. The vast majority of the entires are bound to be sites I'll never visit, either first- party or third-party. I know there are many sites like that already in the MVP HOSTS file. My own HOSTS file has about 250 entries. Even that is more than is needed. The vast majority of sleazy third- party domains linked from webpages are going to a small number of sites, like doubleclick, google-analytics.com, googletagmanager.com, googletagservices.com, 2o7.net, valueclick, facebook.com, etc. Hey !!! That's MY hosts file. Thief !! []'s -- Don't be evil - Google 2004 We have a new policy - Google 2012 |
#33
|
|||
|
|||
I have a fantastic HOSTS file (where can I post it for others to benefit)?
Another option, which you may already know about,
is to block 3rd-party images. In Firefox/Pale Moon that used to be an option in the settings. With the corrupting influence from Google it was changed and hidden. (Mozilla get nearly all of their excessive income from Google.) But the setting is still there in about:config set (create if necessary): permissions.default.image 3 That also seems to block other external files. It can make some websites ugly, in cases where a CSS file and/or images are loaded from a different domain. But for the most part it works OK. The vast majority of ads are coming from 3rd-party spyware servers like Google/Doubleclick, so with 3rd-party images blocked you allow honest ads -- the ones that are actually on the website you chose to visit -- and you block spyware ads. There are also the issues of script and iframes. If you only care about blocking ads then that won't matter, and you might not want to put up with the hassle. But if you care about being tracked, take a look at this code in the pastebin page you linked: iframe src="//www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php? Code like that is in most commercial webpages. It's loading a webpage from Facebook into a iframe, which is essentially a second browser window. What you see is just a small Facebook button. If you block 3rd-party images you might not even see that. But technically you've visited Facebook. The parameters in the page request tell information about where you're coming from, and by requesting the page you send your IP address, userAgent, etc to Facebook. That means that Facebook is following you all around the Internet, even if you've never visited their website. If you have a Facebook account then their iframes allow them to know what you're doing when you're not logged in. Even if you just allow first-party cookies they can probably know who you are easily. The iframe they use makes their hidden webpage a page that you "chose" to visit, so any cookies loaded from it are first-party. But that's just icing on the cake for their datamining operation. Your IP is probably enough for them to figure out who you are, and to track your movements online. Your massive HOSTS file is blocking at least 5 domains from Tomshardware.com, which you may never visit. It's blocking image servers from various countries. It even blocks f**k.org and zerofreepopcorn.com, whatever they are. But it doesn't block Facebook. It doesn't even block google-analytics.com, which is tracking you from the vast majority of webpages you visit, including your pastebin page. That's the trouble with a giant HOSTS file. It's likely to be 98% irrelevant, and while you're blocking the oddball ad server from some obscure page you'll probably never visit, you're not necessarily blocking the sites that matter most. Also worth a try is Acrylic, which is a free DNS server program. It acts as a proxy and has it's own HOSTS file that allow wildcards. So you can block things like *.doubleclick.net and *.doubleclick.com to block all Google/Doubleclick ads. The normal HOSTS file requires adding each possible subdomain. If you look at your HOSTS file you'll see a great deal of redundancy due to that problem. Ad servers can just keep changing the subdomain to thwart your HOSTS file. You might have entries for 200 Doubleclick subdomains, but you don't have an entry for the one they might create next week. |
#34
|
|||
|
|||
I have a fantastic HOSTS file (where can I post it for othersto benefit)?
Mayayana wrote on 8/29/2014 10:16 PM:
| Where can I post a 25,000 line text file for others to benefit? | I certainly wouldn't want a HOSTS file that big. The vast majority of the entires are bound to be sites I'll never visit, either first- party or third-party. I know there are many sites like that already in the MVP HOSTS file. My own HOSTS file has about 250 entries. Even that is more than is needed. The vast majority of sleazy third- party domains linked from webpages are going to a small number of sites, like doubleclick, google-analytics.com, googletagmanager.com, googletagservices.com, 2o7.net, valueclick, facebook.com, etc. I use a Desktop script occasionally to parse webpages for URLs and rarely find one that I don't already have in my HOSTS file. But if you want to make it available to people then why not get your own website? You can have a fullscale website for less than $10/month, and have as many email addresses as you can ever use with your own domain. That's the whole idea of the Internet, after all. It's a public commons where all can take part. There's no reason to regard it as merely a set of ad-supported services. Heck, you don't even need $10 a month. I found a free one, limited space but I'm sure 2 gigs maybe, but I only host a web page. I like playing with html code, so this gives me an outlet. |
#35
|
|||
|
|||
I have a fantastic HOSTS file (where can I post it for othersto benefit)?
On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 10:05:55 -0300, Shadow wrote:
The problem is when you seed it you will have to be online, so that unique seeder will be your IP. Can I seed from Tor? |
#36
|
|||
|
|||
I have a fantastic HOSTS file (where can I post it for othersto benefit)?
On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 10:09:58 -0300, Shadow wrote:
Hey !!! That's MY hosts file. Thief !! Actually, it *could* have elements of everyone's hosts file! I culled the entries from a huge variety of sources. |
#37
|
|||
|
|||
I have a fantastic HOSTS file (where can I post it for othersto benefit)?
Ned Turnbull wrote on 8/29/2014 7:46 PM:
Where can I post a 25,000 line text file for others to benefit? I have a fantastic hosts file, improved over years, always adding the MVP hosts file to it, and adding about a thousand obnoxious domains that I've run into such that I almost never see a valid popup browser (they pop up, but they are all unfound). I never see in-page ads either. snip I'm going to ask, but let's not dwell on this, but in the vein of this subject: How does one go about finding out all these bogus host addresses so you can build your own HOST file. Or even, other than the one link I did see, are there starter lists available? This all sounds like a great idea, and everyone SHOULD be doing it. You've all made a great case between all the posts. I just can't figure out how to get the links. I do clear cookies from my browser, and I guess those would be a good start. Things like click.net, adtracket.com etc. You can be sure when the names are that clear. |
#38
|
|||
|
|||
I have a fantastic HOSTS file (where can I post it for othersto benefit)?
On 30/08/14 01:46, Ned Turnbull wrote:
Where can I post a 25,000 line text file for others to benefit? the hosts file was never intended for this amount of hosts and this makes things slower... I have a fantastic hosts file, improved over years, always adding the MVP hosts file to it, and adding about a thousand obnoxious domains that I've run into such that I almost never see a valid popup browser (they pop up, but they are all unfound). I never see in-page ads either. Yes, I know that many of you use pop up blockers, and hence you have no need for a great hosts file. Yes I know many of you use noscript, and ghostery and all sorts of spyware blasters. Hosts file has the negative side, you need to copy it to each and every machine you have, including portable devices, it's slow too and don't prevent popups from popping up. It's never been the recommended way to block sites, use proper methods for that like privoxy or addblokcer plugins. Privoxy don't need much maintenance as it uses regular expressions to find the advertisement, so it can block such which you haven't seen before. This isn't about that. This is simply about the hosts text file. Period. And how to upload it There are loads of free file hosting, just use one of those. All this is asking is *where* I can post my excellent HOSTS file so that others may benefit from using it? It's looooooong (it's almost 25K lines long!). It's too long, shouldn't be much more than 79 bytes, if it's that short, then it's excellent, if it's longer it's a bad one. I just want to post it, as a text file, so others can use it and improve it. What location do you suggest? You can get my improved one here at once: 127.0.0.1 localhost localhost.localdomain ::1 localhost localhost.localdomain -- //Aho |
#39
|
|||
|
|||
I have a fantastic HOSTS file (where can I post it for others to benefit)?
On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 09:46:58 -0400, Big Al wrote:
I'm going to ask, but let's not dwell on this, but in the vein of this subject: How does one go about finding out all these bogus host addresses so you can build your own HOST file. Or even, other than the one link I did see, are there starter lists available? Most browsers have a key shortcut to see the source of the page you are viewing. In Firefox, it's CTRL-U Look at the links, and put the ones that are obviously not supposed to be there in your hosts file. You will have to close the browser and flush your DNS cache for the changes to take effect. Read up on how to make a hosts file and where it should be placed. Some AV software will not allow you to make one (Avira for example) unless you go into advanced configuration settings. []'s -- Don't be evil - Google 2004 We have a new policy - Google 2012 |
#40
|
|||
|
|||
I have a fantastic HOSTS file (where can I post it for othersto benefit)?
On 30/08/14 15:46, Big Al wrote:
Ned Turnbull wrote on 8/29/2014 7:46 PM: Where can I post a 25,000 line text file for others to benefit? Just a reminder, no one benefits from a such list and they will never do. I have a fantastic hosts file, improved over years, always adding the MVP hosts file to it, and adding about a thousand obnoxious domains that I've run into such that I almost never see a valid popup browser (they pop up, but they are all unfound). I never see in-page ads either. snip I'm going to ask, but let's not dwell on this, but in the vein of this subject: How does one go about finding out all these bogus host addresses so you can build your own HOST file. Or even, other than the one link I did see, are there starter lists available? This all sounds like a great idea, and everyone SHOULD be doing it. No, it's not a great idea, just to show how stupid it can be, back in 2012 Australia decided to block a bite more than 1000 sites as they contained material which ASIC did consider harmful, by blocking those 1000 IP-numbers, they blocked 250000 sites amongst others Melbourne Free University. By blocking an IP, you will exclude many other sites than the one you do not want to get advertisements from. You also make your internet slower, not just for browsing, but for all other activity too. If you want to block sites, then use proper tools like privoxy or those add blocker plug-ins, as this way you can get rid of the advertisement without blocking legitimate content and you aren't slowing down for other protocols. -- //Aho |
#41
|
|||
|
|||
I have a fantastic HOSTS file (where can I post it for othersto benefit)?
Ned Turnbull writes:
Here are ~10,000 additional domains I've found that "I" would avoid: http://pastebin.com/WJy5WH2c I picked this up, sampled a few, and fed it to host/nslookup. Lots of them don't resolve at all, so why would anyone want to enter addresses on one's hosts file remapping to localhost hosts that don't seem to exist, or expired? I think you should clean your additions of those, maybe keep them in a separate file and check periodically if they came back. -- HASM |
#42
|
|||
|
|||
I have a fantastic HOSTS file (where can I post it for others to benefit)?
127.0.0.1 main.exoclick.com 127.0.0.1 static-ssl.exoclick.com 127.0.0.1 ads.exoclick.com 127.0.0.1 syndication.exoclick.com http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm quote Important Note: The HOSTS file now contains a change in the prefix in the HOSTS entries to "0.0.0.0" instead of the usual "127.0.0.1". This was done to resolve a slowdown issue that occurs with the change Microsoft made in the "TCP loopback interface" in Win8.1. This change in the prefix should not affect users. I've had some feedback and COMODO antivirus, Homer Webserver and System Mechanic seems to have issues with the "0.0.0.0" prefix ... to resolve this issue: You can use the "Replace" function in Notepad to convert the entries, or HostsMan (see below) has an option for converting the entries to "0.0.0.0". /quote I assume that " resolve this issue" refers to changing from 127.0.0.1 to 0.0.0.0 |
#43
|
|||
|
|||
I have a fantastic HOSTS file (where can I post it for othersto benefit)?
On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 10:16:04 -0500, M.L. wrote:
I assume that " resolve this issue" refers to changing from 127.0.0.1 to 0.0.0.0 There's also a dhcp service that needs to be turned off, which, on very long hosts files, would otherwise cause a problem. This is a bug in Windows that is about 20 years old, so, they "may" have finally fixed it by how (I don't know as I no longer boot to Windows ever since they killed XP I went to Linux). |
#44
|
|||
|
|||
I have a fantastic HOSTS file (where can I post it for othersto benefit)?
On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 17:27:12 +0100, John wrote:
Just for curiosity, why didn't you put all of your additions into the Hosts file after a comment like "# There are a hundred ways to do it, but, I've been combining dozens of hosts files from all over in addition to adding my own entries, and the pound sign makes each line unique even when the entry isn't unique. So, since I've been combining files of containing thousands of lines of hosts, the easiest way to sort them uniquely is to strip out *all* extraneous characters. For example, here is my alias for munging the default MVP hosts file prior to inserting into my hosts file: alias cleanhost='cat HOSTS | grep -v 127.0.0.1 | grep -v "::" | sed -e "s/^M//g" -e "s/[ ]/ /g" -e "s/ / /g" -e "s/#.*$//" | sed -e "s/ $//" | sed -e "s/0.0.0.0/127.0.0.1/" | sort -u hosts.txt' |
#45
|
|||
|
|||
I have a fantastic HOSTS file (where can I post it for othersto benefit)?
On Sat, 30 Aug 2014 17:21:41 +0100, John wrote:
Even if all you ever do is ****-off Goggle that is a fine and worthy bit of work you have done. Yeah, all their trackers are in that hosts file! |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | Rate This Thread |
|
|